Transforming the revenue process to focus on buying groups is now essential, yet many organizations struggle with where to start and how to avoid early missteps. Join your peers to exchange practical insights on what a buying-group-centric revenue process looks like in practice, including approaches to opportunity mapping, buying group profiles, and opportunity creation strategies. Participants will also discuss how to use pilots to test assumptions, generate early wins, and build momentum. This conversation will be hosted by Terry Flaherty and will include open discussion with participants, so please bring your questions and experiences to share with the group. Questions for discussion:How are you currently identifying, mapping, and engaging buying groups within active opportunities — and what’s working (or not)? What data, signals, or profiles do you use to define a qualified buying group and proactively create new opportunities? Have you run (or are you planning) a pilot to test a buying-group-centric approach? What assumptions did you test, and what early wins or lessons emerged? Peer discussions are available exclusively to Forrester Decisions VIP Leader and Leader license holders for their own participation.

Our 2026 B2B POY Awards recognize companies that have raised the bar in marketing, revenue, product, and customer engagement. Get a preview of the stories they will share at B2B Summit North America.

Revenue process transformation (RPT) is a strategic imperative for B2B organizations seeking predictable growth and customer-centric engagement. Traditional lead-based approaches fail in today’s buying-group-driven environment, where multiple stakeholders influence decisions across complex networks. Our research concludes that success requires shifting to opportunity-centric processes; transitioning to being signal-led; and aligning marketing, sales, and customer success teams under a unified framework. This toolkit equips leaders with actionable guidance, templates, and best practices to build a scalable, integrated revenue engine that delivers measurable business impact.

To effectively transform their revenue process, marketing and sales teams — and the entire organization — must have a common understanding of the terms and concepts they use in their work. This glossary is a starting point for marketing and sales leaders seeking a shared vocabulary for their teams and collaboration partners. It includes terms Forrester analysts use in thinking and speaking about revenue process transformation (RPT). Marketing and sales leaders and their teams can leverage this glossary to reduce confusion about RPT terms and concepts and spend more time and energy creating value for customers and driving business growth through implementing RPT.

The Demand Waterfall® family has been an indispensable measurement framework for B2B organizations to manage, measure, and optimize the performance of their revenue process for the last two decades. The latest version of the waterfall, the Forrester B2B Revenue Waterfall™, has evolved to provide the insights that all revenue process functions — marketing, sales, and customer engagement — require for planning and measuring progress against the full spectrum of opportunity types that make up a B2B revenue plan. This report describes how organizations can plan and manage all revenue opportunities, including acquisition, retention, upsell, and cross-sell, using the B2B Revenue Waterfall.

When managing demand, organizations often place disproportionate value on new leads in new prospect accounts, while disqualifying or ignoring subsequent leads from that account. This tendency, known as second-lead syndrome, often results in limited insight on buying group engagement in the initial opportunity, as well as missed opportunities in the account. Implementing processes that leverage opportunities with buying groups can eliminate second-lead syndrome and maximize the value of each account. In this report, we define second-lead syndrome and provide guidance on how to diagnose and eliminate this process inefficiency.

Many marketing teams disregard signals from additional buying group members who appear after the initial lead. Shifting from a leads-centric approach to one that focuses on buying groups can dramatically improve marketing and sales performance. Organizations must adapt numerous internal processes and systems to make the full transition, but even small steps forward can produce significant improvements. In this report, we introduce the Forrester Buying Groups Manifesto and describe why B2B organizations must take action now to adapt their revenue engine processes for buying groups.

Don't miss out on one of the most attended sessions at Forrester B2B NA Summit! Hear Palo Alto Networks' winning program of the year story. Palo Alto Networks will discuss how a major transformation in its revenue process, from marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) to a focus on buying groups, has fundamentally changed the way that sales and marketing work together, driving major improvements in conversion efficiency and pipeline growth.Key takeaways: Learn how Palo Alto Networks transformed from MQLs to buying groups.Discover best practices for implementing a successful pilot.Understand how this transformation delivers massive business impact.Target audience level: all levels

When an organization undergoes a revenue process transformation, the existing revenue council’s focus on improving processes expands. The council’s goal is to gain a deeper understanding of an organization’s buyers and customers to build a revenue process strategy and plan that reduces the customers’ time to value realization. This report clarifies the revenue council’s expanded remit within a full revenue process transformation.

Successful demand strategies require deep knowledge of the target audience — from the market segment to the account level. Understanding potential opportunities and the size and role of their associated buying groups is imperative for planning programs, messaging, and content; understanding potential deal sizes; and tracking success against opportunities. Sales and marketing must have a common view of the target audience, with a mutual understanding of buyers, their needs, and the relevant solutions. Opportunity maps are powerful tools that can drive this type of cross-functional alignment. In this report, we explain opportunity maps and present a six-step process for creating them.