1 . Define target market.
Action:
Identify your target set of accounts and potential selling opportunities within those accounts. For example, a target account for a software company may contain three opportunities — one for each of its software products, with a different buying group associated with each opportunity. Use this information to set goals for opportunity creation and revenue.
Outcome:
Targeted accounts and targeted opportunities that your goals will be based on
2. Detect active buying groups.
Action:
Look for buying intent signals and triggering events that indicate that your targeted potential opportunities are likely in market. Buying intent signals include, but are not limited to, visits to your own website (first-party signals); partner event participation (second-party signals); and visits to relevant product review sites (third-party signals). Triggering events may include a company relocation or expansion or a change in regulations. Your brand and PR teams’ work to build market awareness will help active buying groups find you in their research.
Outcome:
Awareness of potential opportunities signaling purchase intent and ability to focus spend accordingly
3. Identify buying group members.
Action:
Once a solo prospect has filled out a form to download a report or watch a webinar, aim to uncover additional buying group members. That could take the form of multiple inquiries from the same organization and for the same solution. Explore and implement tools that help you notice and associate the behaviors of buying group members — whether anonymous or known individuals. This can help you assess the intentions of the buying group and use that information to prioritize potential opportunities for revenue development and sales to pursue.
Outcome:
Identification of buying group members and prioritization insights for sales
4. Qualify early-stage opportunities.
Action:
Engaging buying groups requires a different mindset for the entire revenue team. Marketers and revenue development reps (RDRs) should consider second and third leads from the same organization not as duplicates but as reinforcing signals of buying intentions. Pursuing multiple buying group members requires RDRs to move away from using the lead object in their sales force automation system and instead use an object such as the opportunity object, which allows them to simultaneously execute and measure touch sequences against multiple individuals.
Outcome:
Identification of opportunities that are ready for deeper needs-alignment discussions with sales
5. Accelerate opportunities.
Action:
Shifting focus to buying groups gives marketers the chance to partner with sales in a deeply meaningful way. No longer is it just sales’ job to engage these groups and help them move through the pipeline — marketing can as well, by building programs to help attract and engage absent buying group members. They can then supply these programs to revenue development and sales as needed, or even automatically, to help complete buying groups and accelerate deals.
Outcome:
Pipeline opportunities for which sales is aligning solutions
6. Accelerate to close.
Action:
Ideally, marketing and sales will continue to align, with marketing creating programs that help sales engage the full buying group and meet the information needs of each group member. Best-in-class organizations measure buying group engagement, segmenting in-pipeline deals by the buying group members present or absent and executing programs to help sales win the engagement of the buying group. Start with small steps, and look to build and strengthen trust.
Outcome:
Opportunities that have been closed/won
It Was Never About Leads: Why Adapting To Buying Groups Is A Must
Read our B2B Revenue Waterfall e-book to find step-by-step guidance for identifying, engaging, and winning opportunities based on how buyers actually buy.
See How Top Brands Shifted To Buying Groups
Learn how Siemens, Zendesk, and Palo Alto Networks transformed their revenue strategies by moving from outdated MQL models to a buying group approach.