How to Win More B2B Deals by Understanding and Engaging Buying Groups

Executive summary

Your biggest revenue growth opportunity isn’t finding more leads — it’s engaging the 9-12 stakeholders your current approach is ignoring.

While your marketing team hunts for individual MQLs, buying groups of 10+ people are researching solutions, forming preferences, and building consensus around vendors that aren’t you.

By the time someone fills out your form, 70% of their buying journey is complete and 84% of buyers have already chosen their preferred vendor.

The companies consistently winning more deals have shifted from lead-centric to account-centric strategies. They detect buying group activity early, coordinate engagement across multiple stakeholders, and measure success at the account level rather than the contact level.

This transformation delivers measurable results: pipeline increases, conversion improvements, and faster sales cycles. The question isn’t whether to make this shift — it’s how quickly you can implement it before your competitors do.

The death of the MQL

If you’re still measuring marketing success by MQL volume, you’re missing 80% of actual pipeline signals.

B2B purchasing is fundamentally a team sport, yet most marketing and sales processes still operate as if deals are made by individuals. This disconnect costs companies qualified opportunities every single day.

The myth of the single decision maker

The “one contact = one deal” mentality isn’t just outdated — it’s actively harmful. While you’re nurturing that single MQL through your funnel, nine other people are researching solutions, forming opinions, and building consensus around a vendor that isn’t you.

The reality of modern buying groups

Kerry Cunningham, former SiriusDecisions and Forrester analyst and current head of thought leadership at 6sense, has spent years studying how B2B buyers actually behave. His team’s research reveals the stark reality of modern buying groups. 

Buying groups now average 10.6 people in North America, 9.8 in EMEA, and 12.8 in APAC. These aren’t casual observers — these are active participants in the evaluation and decision–[ME4] making process. By the time a single individual fills out a form on your website, the buying group has already completed 70% of its buying journey, established solution parameters, created a shortlist of potential vendors, and picked a favorite.

The hidden cost of lead-centric thinking

Every day you focus on individual MQLs, you’re missing signals from 80% of the actual buying team. When someone from ABC Company fills out your form, there are likely 9-12 other people from that same organization already researching solutions. Some are on your website anonymously. Others are reading analyst reports. Still others are asking their networks for recommendations.

Traditional lead scoring treats these additional signals as noise. Account-based thinking recognizes them as gold.

If you’re optimizing for individual conversion and your competitor is optimizing for buying group engagement, who has the advantage when it comes time to make a shortlist?

Case study spotlight: Zendesk’s enterprise evolution

Zendesk faced this reality head-on as they moved upmarket to target enterprise accounts. Brian Cabreros, their former Director of Marketing Operations, explains: “Figuring out who the buying teams are was very helpful — using 6sense to look at the keywords and engaged personas.”

The results were immediate and measurable. Zendesk saw an 8% to 10% average increase in opportunity creation after implementing their buying team-focused approach.

The shift wasn’t just about volume — it was about quality. Using 6sense’s 6AI™ engine, which processes over 1 trillion signals daily to analyze intent patterns and buying group behavior, the team could identify accounts in Decision or Purchase stages. The team decided to only pass along leads 6sense identified as high intent, meaning they were in either the Decision or Purchase stages of the buying journey. While this reduced the number of records BDRs would work, it dramatically increased their quality.

When you understand that enterprises make decisions as groups, not individuals, everything changes: your targeting, your messaging, your measurement, and your results.

Early influence is everything: Why timing matters more than you think

By the time a prospect fills out a form, 70% of their buying journey is complete. Companies that detect intent early and begin multithreading immediately have exponentially better odds of making the shortlist.

The 70% problem

6sense Research’s analysis of 2,500 buyer surveys reveals a timing problem that should fundamentally change how you think about demand generation. The vast majority of buyer research happens in the shadows, long before they’re ready to talk to vendors.

Buyers spend only 17% their total buying time with sales reps, and only 5-6% with any single vendor. The other 83% is spent researching independently, building internal consensus, and forming preferences based on information they find on their own.

This means that by the point of first contact — whether that’s a form fill, a demo request, or an inbound call — most of the critical decision-making has already happened. Preferences have been formed. Shortlists have been created. Your window for influence is closing fast.

The point of first contact advantage

Here’s the statistic that should change how you think about lead generation: buyers contact their preferred vendor first 84% of the time in North America, with similar patterns globally.

The companies that get contacted first aren’t necessarily better at closing deals. They’re better at being discovered and building preference during the anonymous research phase.

Why MQLs arrive too late

Marketing Qualified Leads represent the moment when anonymous research transitions to identified engagement. But if 70% of the journey is already complete, MQLs are lagging indicators of buying intent, not leading indicators.

Traditional MQL-based qualification is like trying to board a train that’s already left the station.

The fundamental timing problem: MQL thresholds are designed to identify people ready to talk to sales, but buying group formation and vendor evaluation happen long before anyone is ready for that conversation.

The ‘bad lead’ problem

People do fill out forms earlier in the journey when you put valuable content behind gates. Then they ghost you. Because they aren’t ready to talk yet. Sales teams often chalk these up as bad leads. But are they “bad” or just “too early in their research to want to talk”?

One lead equals one signal. By itself, that signal may not indicate account readiness.

The multithreading imperative

While your competitors wait for individual leads to respond and mature, smart companies are building relationships with entire buying groups during the anonymous research phase.

When multiple stakeholders from the same organization encounter your content, your brand, and your point of view during independent research, you build mind share across the entire decision-making team.

The companies that can identify and influence buying groups early will consistently outperform those stuck in lead-by-lead thinking.

As you develop more content tailored to individual personas, you may encounter a catch-22: More people consuming your content because it’s valuable, even if they’re not in a buying process. But when multiple people from the same organization are researching similar topics, that’s not just about your content quality — that’s about buying intent.

‘Hot or not’ revenue moment quiz

Test your ability to spot true buying signals vs. lead-scoring noise

Can you identify the strongest revenue moment? Choose from these three scenarios:

1. One MQL  —  Someone hits your scoring threshold with a legitimate buyer persona role
2. MQL + Pre-MQL  —  One qualified lead plus one person who’s engaged but hasn’t hit the threshold yet
3. Four Pre-MQLs  —  Four people from the same organization engaging with your content, none hitting your MQL threshold

Which account do you think your sales team wants to know about the most?

Answer: It’s always #3. Multiple people from the same organization engaging with your content is the strongest signal of active buying behavior, regardless of individual lead scores.

As Kerry Cunningham explains: “If four people are doing the same thing, that is probably not a coincidence.”

Case study spotlight: Sandler’s group decision recognition

Sandler Training faced the classic B2B challenge: individual contacts weren’t converting into pipeline at the rates they needed. Emily Davidson, Director of Enterprise Marketing, describes their realization: “We were previously going after individuals. However, we now know from market research, that these larger companies are no longer making single- person decisions. It’s a group decision by a buying team.”

The transformation wasn’t just philosophical — it was operational. Sandler shifted their entire approach from individual nurturing to group engagement.

The impact was dramatic: a 30% increase in marketing-influenced pipeline in just six months and a 60% increase in accounts reaching marketing-qualified account (MQA) status within the first month.

When you align your approach with how buyers actually behave, results follow.

The technology trap: How your current tools sabotage buying group success

Most marketing automation platforms and CRMs were built for individual leads, not buying groups. While you’re optimizing for individual conversions, your competitors using next- generation platforms are engaging entire buying committees — and winning deals you never knew you were competing for.

The cost of technology misalignment

Before FullStory implemented 6sense, their marketing team was trapped in what their VP of Growth Marketing calls a “spray-and-pray” approach. Despite having talented people and solid content, they couldn’t see buying group formation or coordinate engagement across multiple stakeholders. Individual leads came and went, but pipeline remained unpredictable.

After integrating 6sense with their existing CRM and marketing automation platforms, FullStory saw immediate transformation: a 48% increase in Average Contract Value for in-market accounts, 27% revenue increase for net-new opportunities in just one quarter, and 36% increase in marketing-influenced qualified pipeline.

The difference wasn’t better content or more leads — it was finally having technology that could detect and engage entire buying groups instead of individual contacts.

Built for a different era

Marketing automation emerged in the early 2000s when B2B buying was simpler. The technology was designed around individual lead scoring, linear funnels, and one-to-one relationships — assumptions that create systematic disadvantages for companies still using these platforms today.

While your team tracks individual email opens and form submissions, companies using account-based intelligence are monitoring coordinated research behavior across multiple stakeholders. When you see one lead, they see buying group formation. When you react to form fills, they proactively engage anonymous researchers.

Traditional marketing automation platforms excel at tracking individual behavior but fundamentally cannot track coordinated group behavior, anonymous research patterns, and cross-stakeholder influence — the signals that actually predict modern B2B purchases.

The duplicate lead problem

Here’s a scenario that costs companies millions every year while their competitors capture the opportunities: Sarah from ABC Company downloads your whitepaper and becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead. Two weeks later, Jim from ABC Company requests a demo. Your system flags him as a duplicate because the company already has an active lead.

Jim’s demo request gets deprioritized or ignored entirely. Meanwhile, your competitor using account-based intelligence sees Sarah and Jim as buying group signals — technical evaluator plus economic buyer — and immediately coordinates targeted outreach to both stakeholders.

Your system was designed to eliminate duplicates. Their system was designed to detect buying groups. Guess who wins the deal?

Missing the forest for the trees

Lead-centric dashboards show you individual trees while your competitors see the entire forest. You track lead volume, conversion rates, and time to MQL. They track account-level engagement patterns, buying group formation, and cross-stakeholder influence.

When five people from the same account visit your pricing page in the same week, your system sees five individual sessions. Your competitor’s system sees a buying committee in active evaluation and triggers coordinated engagement across all stakeholders.

The competitive disadvantage compounds over time. Traditional reporting tells you about leads. Account-based reporting tells you about opportunities your competitors are already pursuing.

How 6sense creates sustainable advantages

Rather than replacing your existing tech stack, 6sense acts as the central intelligence layer that unifies data across all your sales and marketing tools. Companies that make this integration don’t just improve their performance — they gain systematic advantages over competitors still trapped in data silos.

The platform integration advantage

While competitors struggle with fragmented data across multiple systems, companies with integrated 6sense stacks operate from unified intelligence. JAGGAER solved their resource constraints by integrating 6sense with Folloze, Salesforce CRM, Pardot, Outreach, Qualified webchat, Google Analytics, and Looker Studio. This comprehensive integration delivered lower cost per qualified opportunity and real — time performance insights while competitors were still manually assembling account information.

Dialpad achieved similar competitive advantages through strategic integration, reducing cost-per-click by 17% while increasing influenced form fills by 41% in a single quarter — efficiency gains that compound into sustainable market advantages.

Core integration capabilities that create competitive differentiation:

• Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics integration: Automatically creates accounts for in-market companies while competitors wait for form fills
• Marketing automation: Triggers buying-stage appropriate campaigns while competitors send generic sequences
• Sales Engagement Platforms: Routes high-intent accounts to coordinated outreach while competitors make cold calls
• Real-time data enrichment: Maintains current intelligence while competitors work with stale data

The speed of implementation advantage

Companies implementing 6sense achieve buying group capabilities in months, not quarters. This speed advantage creates early-mover benefits in their markets while competitors struggle with longer implementation cycles of traditional ABM platforms.

The business case for integration

Companies that successfully integrate 6sense with their existing tech stack report transformation patterns, including:

• Pipeline Growth
• Deal Size Growth
• Better Win Rates

Case study spotlight: FullStory’s enterprise transformation

FullStory’s transformation illustrates how breaking down technology silos enables buying group success. Before 6sense, their small team struggled to execute targeted campaigns and couldn’t identify which accounts were truly in-market.

By replacing their previous ABM platform with 6sense and integrating it across their tech stack, they transformed from individual lead focus to comprehensive buying group engagement. The results speak to the business impact of proper platform integration:

• 48% increase in Average Contract Value for accounts identified as in-market
• 27% increase in net-new opportunities in one quarter
• 36% increase in marketing-influenced pipeline quarter-over-quarter
• Successfully expanded from SMB/mid-market to enterprise accounts

Their VP of Growth Marketing summarized the transformation: “Despite having a small team, we can now execute campaigns with greater precision and achieve remarkable results.”

The integration approach transforms disconnected point solutions into a coordinated revenue engine where every tool operates from unified account intelligence. While competitors remain trapped in technology silos, companies with integrated 6sense platforms gain systematic advantages that compound over time.

Intelligent Workflows: Automating buying group detection and engagement

Smart companies use workflow automation to systematically identify buying group members, coordinate multi — touch engagement, and maintain consistent messaging across all stakeholders throughout the entire journey.

What Intelligent Workflows actually does

Intelligent Workflows is 6sense’s drag-and-drop visual canvas that allows teams to map their entire go-to-market strategy and activate AI-driven automations that are highly personalized to individuals within buying groups.

Unlike traditional marketing automation that reacts to form fills and email clicks, Intelligent Workflows proactively responds to buying signals and intent data. Teams use a visual interface to drag and drop triggers, decision points, and actions, creating sophisticated automation that can span multiple channels and tools.

The visual strategy canvas

Complex buyer journeys can get messy and confusing quickly. Keeping track of all the triggers, decision points, and activations across multiple stakeholders often leads to breakdowns in execution and communication. Intelligent Workflows solves this by putting everything on a visual canvas where the entire team can understand the process — and executives can easily see and approve the strategy.

Teams can build workflows that automatically detect when someone within their ICP is researching tracked keywords, then enroll them in targeted ad campaigns with educational content and resources that resonate with their specific role and buying stage. If they engage with content, the workflow can automatically acquire their contact information, add them to the CRM, and trigger personalized outreach through marketing automation platforms, sales engagement platforms, or conversational AI agents.

AI-driven personalization at scale

The “intelligent” in Intelligent Workflows comes from its integration with 6sense’s broader platform intelligence. Every decision point and action is informed by real-time intent data, buying stage analysis, and account-level signals from the Signalverse™. This enables incredibly relevant experiences at each touchpoint — nothing generic.

When someone from a target account researches competitive alternatives, the workflow might automatically trigger a competitive takeout campaign with messaging tailored to their role and research behavior. When multiple stakeholders from the same organization engage with content, the workflow can detect buying group formation and coordinate outreach across the entire committee.

Beyond manual multithreading

Traditional multithreading is a manual process: sales reps research accounts, identify potential stakeholders, and reach out individually. This approach works for a handful of high-priority accounts, but it doesn’t scale.

Intelligent Workflows changes the game by automating buying group detection and engagement at scale. Instead of hoping sales reps will manually identify and engage multiple stakeholders, smart workflows automatically identify buying group activity and trigger coordinated responses.

The result is systematic multithreading that works across hundreds or thousands of accounts simultaneously, with consistent messaging and timing that manual processes can’t match.

Intelligent Workflows in action

Scenario 1: Proactive buying group development

When Sarah, a Director of IT Operations at a Fortune 500 company, downloads your security whitepaper, an intelligent workflow triggers automations that:

• Identify the account as high-value based on company size, industry, and technology stack
• Research and identify additional stakeholders using 6sense’s company intelligence to find the CISO, VP of Engineering, and other relevant personas
• Acquire contact information for these additional stakeholders
• Create new contact records in your CRM and marketing automation platform
• Launch coordinated awareness campaigns targeting each persona with role-specific content
• Monitor for buying group formation by tracking engagement across multiple stakeholders
• Alert sales when multiple stakeholders engage or show intent signals

The goal isn’t just to nurture Sarah — it’s to introduce your solution to the entire potential buying committee while competitors are still focused on individual leads.

Scenario 2: Coordinated buying group engagement

When the system identifies multiple people from the same organization showing research behavior, it automatically flags the account for buying group engagement and begins collecting additional intelligence about potential stakeholders.

Journey stage-based content delivery ensures different stakeholders receive relevant information based on their role and the organization’s position in the buying journey. Technical evaluators get technical content. Economic buyers get business case materials. End users get implementation success stories.

The key is that all content is coordinated and consistent, building a unified narrative across multiple stakeholders rather than sending disconnected messages.

Cross-team coordination between marketing and sales is simplified and made consistent when workflows detect buying group activity. Sales gets notified about account-level engagement patterns. Marketing adjusts messaging based on sales feedback. Both teams work from the same account intelligence.

Case study spotlight: Folloze’s 88% account retention

Folloze demonstrates the operational benefits of coordinated buying committee engagement. According to Melinda Monaco, Senior Director of Revenue Marketing and Operations: “The integration has not only made our marketing efforts more targeted and efficient but has also provided our sales teams with actionable insights, significantly enhancing our overall sales performance.”

The results speak for themselves: this strategic approach has kept 88% of accounts in 6QA status; connecting with more buying team members has helped keep opportunities active.

The key insight is that buying group engagement isn’t just about initial qualification — it’s about maintaining momentum throughout long, complex sales cycles. When multiple stakeholders remain engaged, deals stay active even when individual contacts change roles or priorities shift.

Multithreading mastery: Practical strategies for engaging every stakeholder

Successful multithreading requires understanding different stakeholder roles, timing outreach appropriately, and building consensus rather than just collecting contacts.

Mapping the buying group

Not all buying group members are created equal. Effective multithreading starts with understanding the different roles people play in B2B purchase decisions.

Technical decision makers evaluate whether your solution actually works. They care about integration, security, scalability, and implementation complexity. They’re often the most thorough researchers and the most skeptical stakeholders.

Business influencers evaluate whether your solution makes business sense. They care about ROI, competitive advantage, and strategic alignment. They’re typically focused on outcomes rather than features.

End users evaluate whether your solution makes their lives better. They care about ease of use, training requirements, and day-to-day impact. They’re often the most enthusiastic advocates when they see clear personal benefits.

Executive sponsors evaluate whether your solution fits into broader organizational priorities. They care about risk, resource allocation, and strategic positioning. They typically make the final decision but rely heavily on input from other stakeholders.

Each stakeholder type needs different information, delivered in different ways, at different times in the process.

Persona-based Engagement Strategies

Generic multithreading fails because it treats all stakeholders the same. Effective multithreading recognizes that different stakeholders have different needs, different concerns, and different communication preferences.

Technical stakeholders respond to detailed, evidence-based content. They want whitepapers, technical specifications, security documentation, and implementation guides. They prefer email and direct communication.

Business stakeholders respond to strategic, outcome-focused content. They want case studies, ROI calculators, analyst reports, and competitive comparisons. They often engage through LinkedIn and industry publications.

Executive stakeholders respond to concise, high-level summaries. They want executive briefings, strategic overviews, and peer testimonials. They prefer in-person meetings and phone calls.

The key is delivering content at the right time and in the right context while ensuring consistent messaging across all stakeholders.

Solving the coordination challenge

Multithreading multiple stakeholders within the same organization creates a coordination challenge: how do you ensure consistent messaging while allowing for role-specific customization?

The solution is coordinated personalization. All stakeholders should receive messages that reinforce the same core value proposition, but those messages should be customized for their specific role and concerns.

When introducing your solution to a new account, technical stakeholders might receive detailed integration guides, business stakeholders might receive ROI case studies, and executive stakeholders might receive strategic overviews — but all three should reinforce the same fundamental value proposition and competitive positioning.

Building champions, not just contacts

The goal of multithreading isn’t to collect stakeholder contacts — it’s to build stakeholder champions. Champions actively advocate for your solution within their organization. Contacts just respond to your outreach.

Building champions requires understanding what each stakeholder cares about most and demonstrating how your solution addresses their specific concerns. It means providing value beyond your product — industry insights, best practices, peer connections, and strategic guidance.

Champions are created through value-driven relationships, not transactional interactions.

Intent signals for multithreading

The most effective multithreading combines proactive research with reactive intelligence. Intent signals help you identify which stakeholders are actively researching solutions and what specific topics they’re investigating.

Keyword research patterns can reveal stakeholder roles. Someone researching integration requirements is likely a technical evaluator. Someone researching competitive alternatives is likely involved in vendor selection. Someone researching implementation timelines is likely focused on project planning.

Website behavior patterns (on your site and others) reveal stakeholder engagement. Multiple people from the same organization visiting your pricing page indicates active evaluation. Multiple people attending your webinars signals coordinated research. Multiple people downloading similar content demonstrates shared priorities.

These signals help you prioritize outreach and customize messaging based on demonstrated interest rather than assumed needs.

Case study spotlight: Bonterra’s POD model

Bonterra created a systematic approach to multithreading coordination. The company “created POD models where AEs and BDRs meet weekly to discuss 6QAs and recent activities from key accounts, and next steps on multithreading. By working together, both teams aligned on account priorities and messaging, ensuring consistent outreach.”

The key insight is that effective multithreading requires coordination between marketing and sales, not just within sales. When both teams understand account-level engagement patterns and stakeholder priorities, they can coordinate their efforts rather than duplicate or conflict with each other.

Quick multithreading assessment

Use these questions to gauge your current multithreading maturity:

• Are you targeting 6-10 contacts per target account?
• Can you identify which stakeholders are in active research mode?
• Do your sales and marketing teams coordinate on account-level messaging?
• Can you track engagement across multiple buying group members?
• Do you have workflows that automatically identify new stakeholders?

Scoring:

• 5 yes answers: You’re a multithreading master
• 3-4 yes answers: You’re on the right track but have room for improvement
• 1-2 yes answers: You’re still thinking in individual lead terms
• 0 yes answers: Time for a complete multithreading transformation

Measuring what matters: New metrics for buying group success

Traditional lead-based metrics hide buying group progress. Companies need new measurement frameworks that capture group engagement, account momentum, and stakeholder influence.

Moving beyond MQL volume

Most B2B organizations still measure marketing success using individual lead metrics: MQL volume, cost per lead, lead-to-opportunity conversion rates. These metrics made sense when B2B buying was driven by individual decision makers.

In the age of buying groups, these metrics are not just inadequate — they’re counterproductive. They incentivize behavior that optimizes for individual lead generation rather than buying group engagement.

Consider two scenarios: Company A generates 100 MQLs from 100 different organizations. Company B generates 100 MQLs from 20 organizations (5 MQLs per organization). Traditional metrics suggest these companies are performing equally. Buying group reality suggests Company B is significantly outperforming Company A.

Account-based measurement frameworks

Effective buying group measurement requires shifting focus from individual contacts to organizational accounts. This means tracking engagement patterns, stakeholder involvement, and account=level progression rather than individual lead behavior.

Account engagement depth measures how many stakeholders from each target account are actively engaged with your marketing and sales efforts. Deep engagement across multiple stakeholders is a stronger predictor of opportunity creation than individual lead scores.

Stakeholder coverage measures what percentage of key stakeholder types are engaged within each target account. Complete coverage across technical, business, and executive stakeholders suggests higher likelihood of purchase decision.

Account progression velocity measures how quickly accounts move through buying journey stages when multiple stakeholders are engaged versus when only individual contacts are engaged.

Leading vs. lagging indicators

Traditional B2B metrics are mostly lagging indicators: they tell you what happened after it happened. Buying group metrics can provide leading indicators that predict future performance.

Multiple stakeholders researching similar topics is a leading indicator of active buying group formation. This typically happens weeks or months before anyone submits a demo request or responds to sales outreach.

Cross-stakeholder content engagement is a leading indicator of internal consensus building. When technical and business stakeholders are consuming complementary content, it suggests coordinated evaluation rather than individual research.

Anonymous account activity is a leading indicator of early-stage buying group formation. Multiple anonymous visitors from the same organization often precedes identified engagement by several weeks.

These leading indicators enable proactive response rather than reactive follow-up.

The engagement depth metric

Total engagement across all stakeholders within an account is more predictive of purchase likelihood than individual engagement depth. This insight requires a fundamental shift in how we think about lead scoring and qualification.

Instead of scoring individual leads based on individual behavior, account-based scoring evaluates cumulative engagement across all known and anonymous stakeholders within target accounts.

This approach recognizes that buying group decisions are made collectively, not individually. The account with moderate engagement across five stakeholders is more likely to purchase than the account with deep engagement from one stakeholder.

ROI measurement for buying group strategies

Proving the business case for buying group strategies requires understanding a fundamental truth: traditional MQL-based measurement systems fail at a 99% rate, while account-based approaches capture the signals that actually predict revenue.

The measurement problem with individual leads

As Kerry Cunningham explains in his analysis of MQL effectiveness, lead-based processes “suck” because “they don’t work.” The failure rate for MQL conversion is approximately 99%, and despite years of effort from demand generation teams, improvements rarely exceed 3-5% in poorly run operations and 1-1.5% in well-run ones.

The core issue: MQL-based models ignore the single most important fact of B2B buying — that B2B buying is done by groups of people working together. For most B2B companies, that group is in the double digits, and they all conduct research and leave digital footprints across the internet.

Why account-based measurement works

Account-based measurement captures multiple layers of evidence about which accounts are in-market:

• Identified engagement: People who filled out forms or attended events
• Anonymous intelligence: De-anonymized website traffic from target accounts
• Third-party intent: External research signals indicating buying activity

Companies using account-based measurement can identify and prioritize true buying teams for sellers, while traditional MQL systems miss nearly all the important buying signals available.

The competitive advantage of complete intelligence

The signals that MQL-focused competitors miss are critical for virtually all B2B buying and selling processes. This applies to mid-market, commercial, enterprise, and strategic segments.

When you have two pre-MQLs from one organization and one MQL from another organization, account-based measurement systems correctly prioritize the account showing buying group activity. Traditional MQL systems will always prioritize the individual lead, missing the stronger revenue signal.

Measuring what actually matters

Effective buying group measurement focuses on account-level progression rather than individual lead conversion. The key metrics include:

• Buying group engagement depth: How many stakeholders from target accounts are actively engaged
• Account progression velocity: How quickly accounts move through buying stages when multiple stakeholders are engaged
• Anonymous account activity: Early indicators of buying group formation that precede identified engagement

Since nearly 97% of website traffic is anonymous, and a healthy portion comes from accounts actively shopping for solutions, companies that can identify and measure this activity gain significant competitive advantages.

The business case for transformation

Companies that maintain lead-based measurement systems alongside account-based approaches often implement “double funnel” strategies. However, this approach fails to address the fundamental problem: if you continue to orient processes around MQLs, you’ll continue to miss nearly all the important buying signals and condemn that part of your revenue generation to mediocrity.

The most successful companies recognize that unless you sell deals involving only one or two people, the most important measurement capability is identifying when you have multiple leads or unique visitors from the same organization — regardless of their individual MQL status.

Organizations that don’t make this measurement transformation will find it increasingly difficult to compete.

Conclusion: The competitive advantage of buying group mastery

The companies that master buying group engagement will dominate their markets. While competitors chase individual leads, buying group masters build deeper relationships, faster pipelines, and more predictable revenue growth.

This isn’t about incremental improvement — it’s about fundamental competitive advantage. When you understand and engage buying groups effectively, you don’t just win more deals. You win better deals, faster deals, and more profitable deals.

The research is clear, the customer stories are compelling, and the technology is available. What separates winners from losers isn’t access to information or tools — it’s willingness to challenge assumptions and change approaches.

The question isn’t whether to embrace buying groups — it’s how quickly you can transform your approach to capture this competitive advantage. The companies that act on these insights in the next 90 days will be the ones setting the pace in their markets over the next 90 months. The time for buying group mastery is now.