2019 was a busy year for Priority Engine user group roundtables, with hundreds of users coming together from across the globe to ask questions and share success stories with their peers. While every meeting brought fresh ideas and insights from our most successful customers, there were three best practices that consistently rose to the top of the list:
#1: Take immediate action
If there’s one best practice we could highlight from our most successful customers, it’s that they don’t wait for everything to be perfect before they start using Priority Engine. As we all know, deals are a moving target, and the more time you wait to engage, the less chance you’ll have of winning the business. Successful customers don’t wait for the “perfect” email, “perfect” message, or “perfect” lead before they take action. Instead, they begin nurturing active prospects as soon as they export them, and they ensure the sales team is engaging them at the same time.
It’s not always the perfect pitch that wins the deal – it’s the company that gets their foot in the door first and establishes a relationship. Priority Engine helps companies identify accounts that are in market now and successful Priority Engine customers understand this and jump on the opportunities in front of them as soon as they can to get ahead of deals.
#2: Get the sales team involved
One key theme at every user group meeting was the importance of getting the sales team using Priority Engine data. As one accomplished Priority Engine sales user advised, it’s important to use Priority Engine’s insights to connect with prospects and “show them you know them” – but don’t be “creepy” about it. She had a lot of success in 2019 using Priority Engine’s account insights to ask better discovery questions and customize her pitches and demos.
“Keep the data to yourself, but use it to ask smarter questions. This way, you look like the hero.”
In addition to helping with call prep and discovery, many sellers mentioned how they love to use the insights to create more personalized outreach. A BDR told us he was able to significantly increase email responses just by mentioning a competitor listed in the vendor interest data in his email subject line. Others found that they were finally able to break into challenging accounts just by reaching out to new active prospects on topics they were interested in and cc’ing other members of the buying team to encourage a response.
#3: Leverage Priority Engine data for event marketing
In the past year, we’ve seen a massive increase in customers using Priority Engine for event recruitment. Successful event marketers told us they were able to significantly boost attendance at their local events just by building Account Lists based on research location and inviting the most active prospects from the highest-ranked accounts to their events.
In addition to event recruitment, the most innovative customers uploaded lists of people they scanned at tradeshows and prioritized their post-show outreach based on who is the most active in their market segment. They also used this list to find new prospects from companies where they scanned badges, further building out the buying team and expanding their entry points into the account.
Continuous learning for 2020 and beyond
We are constantly learning from our customers. Their direct feedback in forums like these, provides essential input for our product teams to improve Priority Engine in 2020 and beyond. If you are interested in attending one of these sessions coming up, please email me today.
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