A Guide to Sales Intelligence

What is sales intelligence?

The sales world is built on information. The ability to gather, analyze, and leverage information can make In the hyper-competitive market for B2B solutions, the difference between hitting your revenue targets and missing them often comes down to one thing: intelligence. Not just data — actionable, timely intelligence that gives your sales team the edge they need to win. 

Sales intelligence transforms the way you sell by revealing the exact information you need about prospects, when you need it: 

• Who’s actively searching for solutions like yours — right now 
• Which decision-makers you need to engage at target accounts 
• What specific pain points are driving their search 
• When they’re most receptive to your message 

Beyond basic contact information, robust sales intelligence delivers the buying signals, company insights, and behavioral patterns that let your team focus on the right accounts at the right time with the right message. It eliminates guesswork and replaces it with precision. 

The most successful sales organizations don’t just collect data — they harness it. They convert raw information into strategic actions that directly impact revenue: 

• Identify in-market buyers before competitors know they exist 
• Craft personalized outreach that resonates with each stakeholder’s specific concerns 
• Time direct outreach precisely when prospects are most receptive 
• Focus valuable seller time exclusively on accounts with genuine buying intent 

With effective sales intelligence, your team stops shooting in the dark and starts executing with surgical precision. They spend less time researching and more time engaging in meaningful conversations that move deals forward. 

In the following sections, we’ll break down exactly how sales intelligence works, what components make it powerful, and how leading organizations are leveraging it to consistently outperform their competition. 

The components of sales intelligence

Firmographics

Firmographics is a category of data that reveals the crucial basic elements of an organization. When armed with a technology platform that empowers you to review firmographic information, you’ll get the bird’s-eye view of a business.

Firmographic data includes a prospect company’s:

• Industry
• Number of locations
• Number of employees
• Yearly revenue
• Ownership type (private, public, etc.)

Psychographics

Psychographics are your way of understanding how an account makes decisions based on what they believe is intellectually or emotionally important. If you want to build strong relationships as part of your sales strategy, an innate understanding of an account’s psychographic profile is key.

Psychographic profiles include:

• Decision-making style
• Risk tolerance
• Budgeting and financial decision-making behavior
• Regulatory compliance needs and concerns
• Corporate social responsibility culture

Diving into the psychographics of an account will give you a fuller picture of what motivates them.

Technographics

Technographics reveal the technology an organization uses. Whether it’s the CRM, MAP, SEP, or any other type of technology they use, this information helps you uncover the critical systems an organization relies on.

You can use this information to identify accounts that would most benefit from your services. Or you can even use it to identify which organizations are using your competitor’s products, and then target them with a replacement campaign.

If your products or services integrate with other popular technologies and add value, technographics will be crucial to crafting your campaigns.

Market updates

Macroeconomics will always have a huge impact on the buying landscape.

The overall economy has a big impact on B2B spending, especially for new purchases. But in any economic environment, there will be companies

• Receiving private funding for capital investments
• Growing revenue and expanding their teams
• Retooling to adapt to regulatory changes
• Poised to benefit from government spending

It would be unrealistic to keep tabs on ‌market updates for all of your target accounts. Collecting this type of sales intelligence requires technology that tracks this information and provides updates on hot accounts to your teams. Since these revenue moments are tied to events, timing is key. Quick action allows you to provide solutions to customers right when they need them.

Persona maps

Historically, tracking a buying team — and your sales reps’ influence with each member — has been an ad hoc process. Information is usually stored in spreadsheets, flung around your CRM, or simply stored in the minds of your sellers.

Without a concrete process in place for mapping a prospect’s buying team, you risk missing opportunities to influence key decision makers.

The best way to track your influence on the buying team, as well as your progress in uncovering who they are, is with a persona map that delivers insights into your engagement across an organization.

Persona maps reveal:

• The titles of buyers at your accounts
• The people within different departments
• The level of engagement you have within an account

A persona map is crucial to sales intelligence because it provides a quick snapshot of your current state with any given account.

Intent data

Intent data is one of the most important components of sales intelligence because it reveals:

• Which accounts are interested in your products or services
• What is driving their interest,
• And how likely they are to buy soon

Intent data is made up of buying signals generated when people browse the web. If you start researching tourist attractions in Athens, intent data is what allows travel agencies and hotels to start targeting you with ads.

Intent data can function similarly in B2B, but the buying journey is much longer (months or years), involves more people, and is less linear.

To market and sell effectively to B2B buyers, you need to be able to associate intent signals with an account and understand how many people within that account are researching, what the buying group cares about, and how close they are to a decision.

Examples of Intent data include:

• Topics an account is researching on the internet
• Pages on your website they’re visiting without filling out forms
• Campaigns of yours they’ve viewed
• Research they’re doing on third-party review websites

Intent data helps you prioritize outreach to the prospects that are most likely to help you hit revenue targets. It also gives you the insights to craft personalized messaging that addresses the specific, current needs of buyers.

The benefits of sales intelligence

Align sales and marketing

Sales and marketing have often clashed because it’s traditionally difficult to understand which specific activities are yielding results.

Marketing can feel like sales isn’t following up on the leads they’re generating, while sales might feel like the leads they’re receiving are of low quality.

With sales intelligence, both marketing and sales teams have access to the same deep insights about buyers. This naturally aligns them and removes guesswork about what messaging or campaigns might work best for any given account.

Sales intelligence makes it easy for marketing to craft highly relevant campaigns that flow naturally with sales’ efforts to engage key buyers. Instead of worrying about attribution for a deal, the teams work in lockstep to drive revenue.

Get into deals earlier

Too often, sellers get into deal conversations late because they had no idea an account was in-market. By the time you start a conversation, the buyers are already two-thirds of the way through their journey, have come to their own conclusions and biases about what they need to achieve their goals, and have usually already picked a winner.

At this point, you have forfeited your ability to influence decision making.

Collecting the right sales intelligence is like having a crystal ball that tells you about upcoming deals.

Intent data uncovers buyers that are just beginning their buying process. You’ll be able to shape and create demand, rather than react to it.

Pre-intent data — like the firmographics, psychographics, technographics, and market intelligence mentioned above — can reveal companies who haven’t begun a buying process, but look like they’ll be a good fit soon. That information allows your teams to build a proactive plan to shape the buyer’s thinking and build brand awareness and trust.

Improve prioritization

Sellers waste a lot of time, money, and resources hunting down the wrong people and trying to figure out which accounts to target. Only 32% of a seller’s time is spent actually interacting with buyers.

Sales intelligence cuts through the noise to reveal which accounts should be your top priority.

Uncover the buying team

Modern buying teams are big. Gartner places the number at 14 to 23 people for the average buying committee. The chances of closing a deal hinge on your teams’ ability to uncover and influence as many members of the buying team as possible.

Without complete coverage across a buying committee, salespeople risk the possibility of:

• Last-minute stakeholders entering the buying process and derailing progress
• A champion for your solution leaving the buying committee, deflating the odds of a deal getting done

Sales intelligence is key to finding every buying team member and aiding in your efforts to engage them. Using a persona map, you can visualize your in-roads into any given account. This gives you answers to incredibly important questions like:

• What departments have we engaged the most?
• Which departments have we not reached yet?
• What levels of the organization are we reaching?
• Does our coverage of this account align with our typical needs to win a deal?
• What level of engagement do we have with each member of the buying committee?

Sales intelligence gives you deep insights into an account’s buying team and reveals a path for increasing your engagement level.

Reach your buyers at the right time

Over half of B2B buyers expect a personalized experience as they move along their journey. But, because of their desire to remain anonymous as long as possible, it can be difficult to deliver them personalized campaigns.

Sales intelligence sidesteps this problem by constantly building an informed dossier of your buyer, regardless if they’re filling out forms or raising their hand.

Instead of being forced to send generic campaigns to a wide audience, sales intelligence gives you the power to create highly-targeted and personalized campaigns for all of your buyers.

Examples of just-in-time messaging that’s made possible by sales intelligence includes:

• An awareness campaign with content narrowly targeted to a specific industry, company size, and the job role of the recipient
• An offer for a top-of-funnel ebook just as a buyer is beginning their journey
• A personalized experience on your website that’s relevant to the account’s interests
• A campaign advertising a custom demo for audiences at the end of their buying journey

Sales intelligence makes it much easier to deliver the personalized experiences buyers crave.

Stronger customer retention

Existing customers are a company’s most valuable asset. It’s much easier and cheaper to grow the value of an existing account than to acquire a new one. It can be six to seven times more expensive to land new customers than retaining them.

Retaining customers — and growing their accounts — is a crucial strategy for any business.

By applying sales intelligence to your own customers, you can spot:

• New products or services they might be interested in
• Research they’re doing about your competitors — indicating they might be in danger of churning
• Important insights about their company performance — new funding rounds, opening of new locations, etc. — that inform new campaigns

How to use sales intelligence 

Implementing a sales intelligence strategy 

A strategic approach to sales intelligence implementation ensures maximum ROI and adoption across teams: 

1. Audit existing data assets  

• Inventory your current data sources and technologies 
• Identify gaps in your intelligence ecosystem 
• Assess data quality and accessibility issues 

2. Define key intelligence objectives  

• Determine specific business outcomes you want to achieve 
• Prioritize intelligence categories based on your sales model 
• Establish measurable KPIs for intelligence implementation 

3. Select appropriate technology solutions  

• Evaluate sales intelligence platforms against your objectives 
• Ensure integration capabilities with your existing tech stack 
• Consider scalability and future-proofing in your selection 

4. Establish data governance protocols  

• Create clear data ownership and maintenance responsibilities 
• Implement data quality control measures 
• Establish privacy and compliance guidelines 

5. Develop user adoption programs  

• Create role-specific training for intelligence utilization 
• Establish intelligence champions within teams 
• Develop continuous learning programs as capabilities evolve 

Sales intelligence workflows 

Effective sales intelligence requires structured workflows that turn insights into action: 

Prospecting workflow 

1. Use intent data to identify in-market accounts showing interest in relevant topics
2.  Apply firmographic filters to prioritize accounts matching your ICP 
3. Leverage technographic data to refine your approach based on their tech stack 
4. Build targeted account lists with persona mapping to identify key stakeholders
5. Create personalized outreach sequences informed by intelligence insights 

Opportunity management workflow 

1. Apply persona mapping to ensure all buying committee members are identified 
2. Monitor intent signals during the sales process to detect competitive research 
3. Use psychographic insights to tailor messaging to specific stakeholders 
4. Track market updates for trigger events that might affect deal timing 
5. Leverage intelligence to anticipate objections and prepare counterarguments 

Account management workflow 

1. Monitor customers’ intent data for potential upsell/cross-sell opportunities 
2. Track technographic changes that might create new integration opportunities 
3. Watch for organizational changes that could affect your champion relationships
4. Alert teams to competitive research that could indicate churn risk 
5. Identify expansion opportunities through firmographic changes (new locations, etc.) 

Integrating sales intelligence into your tech stack 

Maximizing value requires seamless integration with existing systems: 

1. CRM integration  

• Ensure intelligence flows automatically into contact and account records 
• Create intelligence-driven tasks and alerts within your CRM workflow 
• Develop reporting that measures the impact of intelligence on outcomes 

2. Marketing automation connection  

• Trigger automated campaigns based on intelligence signals 
• Personalize content based on intent data and psychographic insights 
• Score leads and accounts using intelligence-informed algorithms 

3. Sales enablement platform  

• Serve intelligence-informed content recommendations to sellers 
• Create playbooks that leverage specific intelligence categories 
• Track content performance against intelligence-identified segments 

4. Communication tools  

• Integrate intelligence alerts into team messaging platforms 
• Enable easy sharing of intelligence insights across teams 
• Create intelligence-driven email templates for quick deployment 

6sense Sales Intelligence: The complete solution 

When it comes to implementing sales intelligence in your organization, selecting the right platform is critical to your success. 6sense Sales Intelligence stands out as a comprehensive solution that addresses the full spectrum of sales intelligence needs through its AI-powered platform. 

How 6sense transforms sales intelligence 

6sense’s approach to sales intelligence eliminates both guesswork and grunt work that traditionally plague sales teams. The platform operates on a foundation of massive data collection and intelligent processing: 

• The Signalverse™: Captures over a trillion data points daily to identify B2B buying patterns across millions of accounts worldwide 
• B2B-focused AI: Uses machine learning to interpret buyer behavior and compare it to past customer patterns 
• Comprehensive contact data: Quickly identifies and provides contact information for key decision-makers within target accounts 

Key capabilities that drive results 

6sense Sales Intelligence integrates seamlessly into your sellers’ everyday workflows, providing: 

• Account prioritization: AI surfaces accounts that are in-market and highlights their buying stage 
• Intent data: Reveals what prospects are researching to enable tailored messaging 
• Sales Copilot: AI assistance that helps sellers make every interaction count 
• Contact discovery: Quick access to contact information for key personas within accounts 
• Campaign integration: Ability to add contacts directly to campaigns to build interest across buying committees 
• Cross-team alignment: Keeps sales messaging and targeting aligned with marketing initiatives 

Proven success stories 

Organizations implementing 6sense Sales Intelligence have achieved remarkable results: 

Aruba 

• Challenge: Needed to accelerate sales velocity and improve account engagement 
• Results: 60% increase in sales velocity 
• Implementation: Used 6sense to reduce manual processes and deliver personalized advertising to target accounts 

Showpad 

• Challenge: Sought to improve close rates and opportunity identification 
• Results: 289% increase in close rates with 76% of qualified opportunities identified by 6sense 
• Implementation: Leveraged intent data and predictive models to focus on high-potential accounts 

Auth0 

• Challenge: Needed to generate more high-quality opportunities and increase pipeline value 
• Results: 25% increase in average selling price and $3 million pipeline increase within six weeks 
• Implementation: Focused on “hot accounts” identified by 6sense, which now account for 80% of their opportunities 

Bynder 

• Challenge: Wanted to improve BDR productivity and quota attainment 
• Results: 250% increase in outbound pipeline, with platform ROI achieved in under four months
• Implementation: Leveraged intent data, account intelligence, and predictive analytics to focus sales efforts 

Why 6sense stands out 

What makes 6sense particularly effective as a sales intelligence solution: 

1. Comprehensive data foundation: The platform’s Signalverse™ collects and processes an unparalleled amount of B2B buying signals 
2. Predictive intelligence: Goes beyond showing current status to predict where accounts are in their buying journey 
3. Full-funnel visibility: Identifies anonymous buyers early in their research process before they fill out forms 
4. Sales and marketing alignment: Provides a unified view of accounts for both teams, ensuring coordinated engagement 
5. Actionable interface: Delivers intelligence directly within the tools sellers already use daily 

Implementation approach 

Implementing 6sense Sales Intelligence follows a structured approach designed for quick time-to-value: 

1. Connect your data: Integrate CRM, marketing automation, and website data 
2. Define ideal customer profile: Use AI-assisted ICP identification to focus on the right accounts 
3. Activate intelligence: Deploy immediate account prioritization and contact discovery
4. Enable sales team: Provide targeted training on using intelligence within existing workflows 
5. Measure and optimize: Track key performance indicators to continuously refine your approach

By centralizing sales intelligence in a comprehensive platform like 6sense, organizations eliminate the fragmentation and inefficiency that often plague sales operations. Teams spend less time researching and more time engaging in meaningful conversations with prospects who are ready to buy, directly impacting revenue growth and sales efficiency. 

The future of sales intelligence

The sales profession is quickly moving from the age of data to the age of intelligence. It’s no longer about having as much data as possible to support your sellers, but rather having actionable insights that reveal in-market accounts, accurate contact information for decisionmakers, and the ability to access that intelligence wherever a seller may be. 

AI-powered intelligence orchestration 

The next frontier of sales intelligence involves AI that actively orchestrates selling activities: 

• Predictive opportunity scoring that identifies winning deals with greater accuracy 
• Conversational intelligence that analyzes sales interactions and provides real-time coaching 
• Opportunity risk detection that alerts teams to deals showing negative signals 
• Next-best-action recommendations that guide sellers through complex sales processes 
• Autonomous prospecting where AI identifies, qualifies, and initiates engagement with accounts 

Integrated intelligence ecosystems 

Future sales intelligence platforms will create seamless ecosystems where: 

• Cross-platform intelligence flows between marketing, sales, customer success, and product teams 
• Ambient intelligence is continuously available through voice assistants and augmented reality
• Collaborative intelligence networks allow companies to share anonymized insights on market trends 
• Vertical-specific intelligence provides industry-specialized signals and insights 
• Intelligence marketplaces enable companies to access specialized data sources on demand 

Behavioral intelligence revolution 

Beyond traditional data points, behavioral intelligence will transform how we understand buyers: 

• Digital body language analysis that interprets subtle signals from digital interactions 
• Buying team dynamic mapping that reveals power structures and influence patterns 
• Decision driver modeling that identifies the true motivations behind purchases 
• Change readiness assessment that gauges an organization’s ability to adopt new solutions
• Value realization tracking that connects sales promises to actual implementation outcomes 

Privacy-centered intelligence 

As privacy regulations evolve, sales intelligence will adapt through: 

• First-party data maximization strategies that reduce dependence on third-party sources 
• Consent-based intelligence gathering that provides value in exchange for insights 
• Anonymous intelligence aggregation that maintains privacy while delivering actionable data 
• Blockchain-verified consent chains that document permission for data usage 
• Self-sovereign identity systems that give buyers control over their information

Intelligence democratization 

Access to powerful sales intelligence will expand beyond enterprise companies: 

• Intelligence-as-a-Service models making advanced capabilities affordable for SMBs 
• No-code intelligence platforms allowing non-technical users to create custom insights
• Open-source intelligence frameworks providing foundation models anyone can build upon
• Embedded intelligence appearing in everyday business applications by default 
• Intelligence co-ops where smaller companies pool resources to access enterprise-grade insights 

As AI continues to improve, intelligence will become even more insightful and more actionable. Companies that want to put their sellers in the best possible position to succeed need to give them access to sales intelligence tools that shine a light on the day-to-day actions that can help drive your team’s success. Those who master these evolving capabilities will find themselves with a sustainable competitive advantage in an increasingly complex buying landscape.