Palo Alto Networks’ sales and marketing teams understood the concept of buying groups. The sales team sold solutions to buying groups. Marketing targeted personas in those buying groups. Yet, marketing would hand off leads to sales one by one. And because those leads lacked context, the process was dragging down conversion rates.
Lauren Daley, director of marketing operations at Palo Alto Networks, describes how working with Forrester helped the revenue teams formalize the buying-group concept and rally around it. Forrester analysts helped Palo Alto Networks implement a buying groups pilot and train business development representatives to identify the buying group members connected to sales opportunities before handing them off to the sales team. The results thus far have been remarkable: a 17-fold increase in pipeline progression, deal sizes more than doubled, and a 17% greater closed-won rate for opportunities with buying groups attached.
