Tag: Buyers Journey

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Q4 Release

LinkedIn Sales Navigator unveiled its Q4 release this month with new account and relationship intelligence lists, improvements to buyer intent, refined searching, expanded revenue and technology data, and a more streamlined ability to upload a sales rep’s book of business.

The new My Current Accounts homepage prompt lets sales reps load their book of business as a CSV list matched against LinkedIn company profiles.  In addition, LinkedIn offers a quick field mapper to ensure the CSV is properly ingested and matched to the correct LinkedIn company profiles.

Account Lists provide several benefits to sales reps.  Sales Navigator users can

  • Target in-market accounts based on LinkedIn Buyer Intent
  • Review real-time alerts around sales triggers such as funding events, leadership changes, and headcount growth/decline
  • Streamline search and prospecting efforts by spotlighting specific saved searches based a user’s book of business

“Yes, it’s great on its own,” blogged LinkedIn Product Marketing Manager Austin Gray.  “But it reaches a whole new level of capability when you can manage your entire book of business in Sales Navigator – insights surfaced via features like Buyer Intent are more actionable, searching becomes more powerful, and it’s that much easier to stay on top of what’s happening at your most important accounts.”

LinkedIn already aggregated Buyer Intent scores spanning 180 different intent signals, and it added four isolated visible Buyer Intent activities as part of an early beta in Q3.  LinkedIn plans to release additional Buyer Intent activities in future releases.  These specific activities are displayed with the associated account.  Furthermore, when the intent activity is public-facing, the individual completing the activity is also presented to the sales rep.

The four isolated Buyer Intent activities are

  1. Who’s followed a company
  2. Who’s visited your profile
  3. Who’s a new connection to yourself
  4. Who’s filled out a lead gen form
Reps can view LinkedIn buyer intent against their account list and then target accounts with high intent levels.

LinkedIn contends that its intent insights differ from other intent data sets across multiple dimensions, beginning with its identity-based intelligence.  Because LinkedIn users are opted-in, the intent data is tied to the individual conducting research on LinkedIn, not the broader account.  Thus, users know “whether it’s the actual person, groups of people, or if they’re a decision maker.”

Sales Navigator said that it will offer a full-funnel view across the buyers’ journey “from the top of the funnel with ad engagement, to the middle with product page engagement, and to the bottom of the funnel with InMail Engagement.”

Finally, LinkedIn positions activity transparency as a differentiator that goes beyond a signal score to activity detail, which will expand in scope.

Current Account Lists and Buyer Intent are available in Advanced and Advanced Plus (CRM) editions of Sales Navigator.

Buyer Activities capture account and contact-level intent.

LinkedIn did not expand the Buyer Intent categories in Q4 but added two new features: Filtering for Buyer Activities and new Buyer Intent account hover cards.  On Account Pages, sales reps can filter for activities by time range and level of decision-making ability.

Reps can also hover over accounts on Alerts, Lists, and Lead Pages to better evaluate an opportunity and refine account messaging.  The hover popup displays the level of buyer interest, recent news, and decision-makers changes “so sellers can easily double check any account’s level of intent as the work through Sales Navigator, without disrupting the current workflow.”

Hover cards provide account intelligence without disrupting research flow.

The New Executives at Saved Accounts List is an auto-generated list based on the saved accounts list.  The list identifies VP and CxO executives hired by tracked accounts.  While the executive view restricts the report to top-level executives, it doesn’t yet support filtering by function, a valuable report extension.

I’ve long extolled the value of identifying new executives at companies.  Fortunately, sales intelligence solutions are doing a better job of leveraging executive change insights in their products:

  • D&B Hoovers supports exec change alerts and triggers by job function.
  • ZoomInfo offers executive tracking of champions to new companies along with backfill contact recommendations at their old employer.
  • LinkedIn identifies new execs at saved accounts.

“We’ve found a lot of success internally being able to see when a new executive comes in,” LinkedIn Sales Solutions Head of Product Marketing Neil Khare explained to GZ Consulting during a briefing.  “They’re generally more willing to think about new vendors or have a mandate to change things up a little bit.  It’s a great time to capitalize on it, and we find that we’ve had some success internally on it, so we wanted to bring this up externally as well.”

LinkedIn also released a Recently Accepted Connections and InMails List highlighting individuals who responded to connection requests or InMails over the past thirty days.

The lists are available online from the list tab or via a weekly email digest.

“These are people that you are going to want to follow up with,” stated Khare.

Users can access two updated filters when building lists: Technology Used and Revenue.  Both filters have been improved with new data licensing agreements from undisclosed data partners. 

Accounts may be filtered by preset revenue ranges (vs. discrete values determined by the end-user).  All revenue data is in US Dollars.

To improve regional screening, users can paste a set of postal codes.

LinkedIn Sales Insights, LinkedIn’s DaaS enrichment service for sales ops, also benefited from expanded revenue data sourced from LinkedIn members, third-party vendors, and AI models.  95% of Fortune 500 and 75% of publicly traded companies display discrete revenue data.  More broadly, 60% of companies have at least a modeled revenue range.

To improve the Sales Insights workflow, LSI added exclusion filters for companies and personas, helping Sales Operations “focus on industries and geographies that are relevant to your business.”

LinkedIn Sales Insights now offers exclusion criteria to improve reporting filters.

RollWorks Journey Events and Sales Insights for HubSpot

ABX Platform RollWorks launched Journey Events for HubSpot, a consolidated account-level view of the customer buying journey.  The service helps B2B teams understand which activities are helping move customers through the decision process and which activities are sub-optimal and should be adjusted.

“Due to its ability to surface every marketing and sales activity driving an account’s progression, Journey Events for HubSpot also provides sales teams a comprehensive look (both immediately and over time) at how an account is moving—what is working and what is helping to drive the account progression, including seeing every action alongside an account spike,” stated the firm.  “This helps sellers plan and personalize outreach by identifying the optimal time to contact an account and tailor messaging based on the last action that may have had an effect.”

Journey Events pulls engagement, intent, and stage data from HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo, RollWorks, and G2.

RollWorks Journey Events was announced last fall and is now available inside HubSpot.

RollWorks gathers time-stamped events such as meetings booked, opportunities generated, and SDR emails.  It then matches activity history against intent, engagement, and journey stage data.  As a result, sales and marketing professionals can visualize account progression against activity history to determine the efficacy of various activities. 

“At a critical time when marketers across the board are being asked to do more with far less, RollWorks Journey Events for HubSpot stands out for its ability to help all go-to-market teams be more efficient with their ABM strategies.  Being able to see each and every marketing and sales activity that’s driving account progression is huge.  With that, for example, you won’t send irrelevant messages in an email or waste money sending a gift to an account if it isn’t ready.  Instead, your organization can focus on what’s working and foster a common language between sales and marketing.”

Jodi Cerretani, RollWorks’ Head of Demand Generation

RollWorks has established HubSpot as a key partner and invested significantly in HubSpot connectors.  In June, it launched Sales Insights for HubSpot, which employs data science to provide a “360-degree view of accounts throughout the buying journey, helping B2B marketers and sales teams to eliminate the guesswork and create more timely and efficient sales outreach.”

It also has enjoyed significant success with its RollWorks ABM HubSpot App, which passed 500 installs in April, 150% above its nearest platform competitor.  The integration enables teams “to identify high-fit, high-intent accounts and buyers, reach them efficiently, and measure impact.”

“RollWorks is laser-focused on engagement quality innovation, and we are incredibly proud of our acceleration and momentum within the HubSpot ecosystem,” stated Justin Cooperman, VP of Product Management.  “With Journey Events for HubSpot, we’ve raised the bar on relevance and personalization between seller and prospect.”

RollWorks Sales Insights for HubSpot identifies spiking ad engagement and website visits.

Sales Insights identifies accounts with spiking engagement based on visitor intelligence and advertising views.  RollWorks flags accounts with Account Spikes compared to baseline activity and visualizes engagement within HubSpot.  As a result, revenue teams can prioritize marketing programs and sales outreach based on spiking engagement.

Sales Insights de-anonymizes existing HubSpot CRM contacts and automates sales alerts when engagement activity spikes.  It also identifies unassigned spiking accounts and notifies sales reps via email when there is spiking engagement.  Additionally, within the HubSpot Company Record, an account timeline displays activity across the website, ads, intent, CRM, marketing automation platform, etc.

Likewise, marketing can analyze which campaigns lead to engagement surges and tailor ABM campaigns accordingly.  They can also build nurture workflows for spiking accounts. “There’s a difference between ‘pipeline’ and ‘pipedream.’ I prefer the former,” said RollWorks VP of Sales Shawn Cook.  “When my sales teams know who and what content a prospect is engaging with, they can take on the role of trusted advisor and advance the conversations with the accounts that are likely to buy from us.  Sales needs to not only know what the content is but also why that piece of content was created.  This is where the alignment is magnified.”

Sales Insights for HubSpot is included as part of the $995 per month RollWorks Account Based Platform license.

SalesLoft Acquires Professional Services Partner InStereo

Sales Engagement vendor SalesLoft announced that it acquired professional services partner InStereo.  InStereo, founded in 2018 by Bill Galfano and Adam Post, was an early ecosystem partner that has grown alongside SalesLoft.  Last year, SalesLoft named them their “Partner of the Year.”

“We were impressed by their focus on what the customer is trying to achieve,” SalesLoft President and Chief Strategy Officer Rob Forman told GZ Consulting.

As a partner, InStereo helped “B2B Sales and Marketing teams better engage with buyers to create more demand, authentically engage prospects, and convert prospects into delighted customers.”

“Bringing InStereo directly into the SalesLoft family is a key way we are investing in our customers’ success.  Our customers will benefit from InStereo’s deep understanding of buyer journeys and engagement strategies.  Their experience and proven enterprise methodologies will help customers operationalize the SalesLoft platform and accelerate the value of Sales Engagement across their entire revenue organization.”

SalesLoft CEO Kyle Porter

InStereo focuses on go-to-market and implementation strategy for SalesLoft, HubSpot, and Salesforce delivered through a pair of consulting services:

  • Buyer Experience Strategy focuses on the buyer’s journey, ICP, demand unit persona, and the “buyer engagement blueprint.”

    “We believe customer journey maps are more than just wall art,” states InStereo.  “We create buyer journeys you can activate.  By understanding how buyers approach the purchase process, sales and marketing teams can better align people, process, and content to deliver just what buyers need, when they need it.”
  • Buyer Engagement Services pairs clients with a Strategist and Revenue Consultant to assist with enterprise software implementations.  For SalesLoft, they focus on “1:1, personalized engagement via cadences” and process automation.  For marketing automation, InStereo assists with nurture campaigns and optimization, and for CRM, they focus on leveraging CRM capabilities and improving data quality.  Other services include SalesLoft Admin as a Service and sales development services.

“At SalesLoft, our goal isn’t to just sell software; it’s to help our customers exceed their revenue goals,” said SalesLoft CRO Steve Goldberg.  “Too many times software companies focus on features and technology, not the success of their customers.  InStereo shares our passion for helping our customers get the outcomes they’re looking for.”

InStereo’s customers skew towards enterprise implementations.  SalesLoft “plans to take their methodologies into new areas of our business,” expanding InStereo beyond the technology vertical into financial services, SalesLoft’s second-largest vertical.

InStereo has completed over 150 customer engagements.  Joint customers include Cargill, Pegasystems, and 3M.

“This past year we tripled our investment into our alliance organization and programs because empowering our partners leads to success for our customers,” said Forman.   “InStereo leveraged the power of our partnership and consistently drove incredible outcomes for our mutual customers.”

All twenty InStereo employees will be joining SalesLoft, including their two founders and Carrie McGrew, InStereo’s VP of Strategy.  In addition, Galfano will be joining the CRO Leadership Team as the SVP of Consulting Services.

SalesLoft did not provide any pricing deals on the acquisition.

RollWorks Journey Stages

ABM Platform RollWorks announced Journey Stages.  The new feature “gives B2B marketing and sales teams deeper insight into the impact of go-to-market activities on account progression.”

Journey Stages determines the stage of the buying journey and activates stage-specific, multi-channel campaigns based upon this intelligence.  Journey Stages helps revenue teams “uncover insights about account journeys, measure account progression and regression, and understand key drivers and trends for any velocity changes between stages.”

Journey Stages lets sales and marketing professionals target and orchestrate multi-channel account-based campaigns based upon the journey phase.  Journey Stages tracks account progression based upon custom definitions across the full customer lifecycle.

RollWorks Journey Stages Account Progression.

“For example, if a bulk of your accounts are ‘unaware,’ you may prioritize brand programs over lower funnel plays,” blogged RollWorks Lead Product Manager Mark Miller.  ”If you see that a bulk of your accounts are ‘aware,’ you’ll likely focus on pulling them down the funnel with different offers. Essentially, you’ll have the information you need to toggle certain programs and budgets on and off at the ready.”

“We’re eager to bring this robust set of identification and measurement features to market,” said Justin Cooperman, VP of Product at RollWorks. “With Journey Stages and additional journey functionality shortly to come, RollWorks gives marketers a new layer of end-to-end insights to help them better understand the impact of their Account-Based campaigns, enabling finer tuning of their ABM programs for pipeline progression and revenue growth.”

Journey Stages is currently in beta, with GA scheduled for Summer 2021.