The current state of the economy has brought serious inflation in the B2B industry.
Brands are struggling to keep up with shrinking marketing budgets and fierce online competition.
In the latest episode of GTM innovators, Latané Conant, CMO of 6sense and G2 Chief Revenue Officer Mike Weir, shed light on how generative AI and intent data can play a pivotal role in reducing B2B inflation to bring sales and marketing teams together and power lasting revenue growth.
Rising inflation in the B2B industry
According to Latané, inflation in the B2B software sector is inevitable in today’s current economic environment. And simply put, not achieving the targeted number of deals will decrease your ROI and impact team morale.
“It’s the same as buying milk and eggs from Trader Joes,” says Latané. “Why do I have to pay $300 when it costs around $75 from a shop near my house?” Inflation is on everyone’s mind across the world, and the B2B sector is not exempt. Even with a strictly allocated budget, Latané suggests there’s always room to improve win rates and find profitability.
She says the secret sauce of steady revenue growth includes segmenting and analyzing your ideal customer persona, reaching out to sales prospects with a personalized approach, and dissecting lead activity that can pave the way for future deal success.
Latané’s quick tips for curbing B2B inflation:
- Lay out the current ebbs and flows in the sales and marketing process.
- Dissect what has worked and use actionable metrics to move the needle.
- Shift the focus from red (missed conversions) to green (engaged contacts so far).
How intent data can optimize the sales cycle
Latané emphasizes that while every B2B organization approaches the sales cycle differently, account prioritization and engagement are challenging aspects for any company to get right.
“To engage with new accounts, we revisited the dark funnel to dissect old patterns,” Latané explains. 6sense uses a specific workflow, known as the ‘reach model’ to run automated campaigns based on intent data.
The gist of the model for your notes: Prioritize high-intent leads with low reach, and deprioritize low-intent leads with an unknown reach. 6sense’s results speak for themselves, as they successfully penetrated 700 accounts and saw a 50% increase in engagement rate.
Reach can mean a slew of different things for different organizations (number of impressions or attainable share of voice, for example), so Latané encourages teams to build their own GTM models based on their business model structure.
Generative AI and automating content engagement
According to Latané, adjusting your GTM approach with AI tools like ChatGPT or Google’s Bard can optimize a large chunk of outbound sales processes.
At 6sense, Latané’s team successfully incorporated ChatGPT into operations like email marketing, blog creation, and customized chatbots – all while retaining a focus on human connectedness and empathy.
Even though AI can help BDRs achieve more, it can lead to negative circumstances if left unchecked, she says, advising 10% as the amount of work that should be left up to automation.
Advice from a pro
Latané’s experience in the sales industry has led to one big learning: 10% of the sales pipeline should always be automatic.
The prospects represented in this 10% do not need hand-holding but rather an immediate list of next steps. The other 90% is where you can uncover optimization opportunities. Here, BDRs and marketing teams should shift focus from new lead acquisition to existing pipeline engagement, more website conversions, and search engine optimization.
The role of a BDR in the sales and marketing lifecycle
A BDR needs to have skin in the game to win. So, attending to their prospects as they would friends and family can help develop those personal connections that can bolster reliability in the market.
The notable paradox here is that now BDRs are being encouraged to leverage AI tools for writing emails and developing automated responses, but they can’t abandon humanistic touches - they’ll still need to tweak and make AI-generated, customer-facing content more personalized.
And while a brand can create layers of content deliverables and sales enablement assets now with generative AI, sales pros should still be able to shift focus to identifying a prospect’s immediate needs and what kind of engagement they anticipate from the brand.
Key rules to engage cold contacts for BDRs
- Prioritize the lead nurturing lifecycle more than lead generation.
- Understand what it takes to make a deal work and dissect buyer behavior.
- Scale content creation with generative AI tools.
“Even if change is for the better, change is hard,” says Latané. “Make peace with what you have and leverage it for your brand growth.” The idea is to work smarter by creating a symbiotic relationship with smart tech, nixing old programs that aren’t contributing to efficiency, and challenging yourself and your BDRs to align with a shifting market.
Other lessons from Latané in this episode
In episode 9 of GTM Innovators, the full conversation with Latané Conant includes other takeaways such as:
- How BDRs are pivoting from traditional messaging and PR to conversational email handling
- How to get more value from SEO through AI automation and dominate the SERPs
- Generative AI’s impact on mergers and acquisitions
Watch the full episode on YouTube and learn more about Latané and other GTM experts by subscribing to the GTM Innovators podcast today - available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, and more.
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by Washija Kazim
by Mike Weir