The biggest bottleneck in most B2B go-to-market motions is the handoff between marketing and sales. Marketing nurtures accounts until they seem ready, then hands off to sales. Sales says the accounts are not ready and passes them back to marketing. No one owns the account journey.
Your Ideal Customer Profile is the foundation of every strategic decision your company makes. Which accounts to target. Which prospects to close. Which content to create. Which partnerships to pursue. Which product features to build. All flow from a clear understanding of your best customers.
In consumer marketing, ad targeting often focuses on individual demographics and behaviors. Show a coffee ad to coffee drinkers. Show a fashion ad to people interested in fashion.
In B2B sales, timing is everything. The difference between reaching out to a prospect at the beginning of their buying journey versus after they’ve already chosen a competitor can mean the difference between winning a deal and losing it.
Every sales and marketing team has limited resources. You can’t pursue every prospect with equal intensity. You have to make choices about which companies and customers to focus on.
Once an account is in active sales engagement, you need a way to track whether the deal is moving forward or stalling. Engagement scoring solves this by synthesizing all interactions (emails, meetings, website visits, CRM notes) into a single number that represents account health and deal momentum.
Your website is often the first and most frequently visited touchpoint for prospects evaluating your solution. Yet most B2B websites serve the same experience to every visitor. A Fortune 500 prospect and a startup get the same homepage. A prospect already familiar with your solution and a complete newcomer see identical messaging. This lack of personalization leaves significant conversion opportunity on the table.
In the world of B2B sales and marketing, information is power. The more you know about the accounts you’re targeting, the more effectively you can engage decision-makers, personalize your messaging, and close deals faster.
In traditional demand generation, companies use lead scoring to prioritize inbound prospects. A lead takes certain actions (visits pricing page, downloads a resource, opens multiple emails), accumulates points, and gets passed to sales when it reaches a threshold. Lead scoring works for traditional channels.
Intent data tells you that an account is in market. Website engagement tells you they are researching. Email engagement tells you they are responsive. But how do you combine these signals into a single number that tells your sales team: “This account is ready for outreach right now”?
Selecting the right accounts to pursue in your ABM program is perhaps the most consequential decision you’ll make. You could have brilliant messaging, flawless execution, and world-class coordination between sales and marketing, but if you’re targeting the wrong accounts, the results will disappoint.
B2B ecommerce platforms face a unique challenge: most website visitors arrive anonymously. You don’t know who they are, what companies they represent, or whether they’re qualified prospects. This anonymity makes it difficult to personalize experiences, coordinate outbound marketing, or prioritize follow-up.