Ep. 152 - The Critical Shift: Adapting Your Marketing to Align with Modern Buyer Behavior

Guest: Kerry Cunningham, Research & Thought Leadership at 6sense 

85% of buyers initiate the first conversation with vendors—on their terms. If your marketing still revolves around capturing leads and pushing outbound sales, you're already behind.

Kerry Cunningham, Head of Research at 6Sense, shares insights from their Buyer Experience Report 2024, revealing how today’s B2B buyers operate—and why most SaaS companies are out of sync. 

Buyers come into the process knowing who they’ll evaluate, and 90% of the time, they buy from their initial shortlist. If you’re not on it, no amount of sales effort will save you.

🔍 So, what’s the playbook for modern marketing? Kerry explains why demand creation—not just demand capture—is the key to winning future deals. Marketers must move beyond gated content, outbound cadences, and “hunting” leads. Instead, they need to build brand presence early, engage in buyer communities, and ensure their company is top-of-mind long before a purchase is in motion.

Key Takeaways:

✅ Only 1-3% of your ICP is in-market at any given time. Most SaaS companies waste time on buyers who simply aren’t ready.
✅ Buyers ignore cold outreach until they decide to engage. 50% receive calls and emails for weeks (even months) before responding.
✅ Analysts and consultants influence over 80% of SaaS deals. If analyst relations aren’t part of your strategy, you’re missing a major growth lever.

💡 The companies winning today aren’t chasing buyers—they’re positioning themselves as the obvious choice before a buying cycle even starts. Kerry shares how 6Sense does this and how your team can apply these insights to future-proof your marketing.

🎧 Listen now to learn how to shift your strategy for today’s B2B buyer.

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Transcript

[00:00:09] Ken: Welcome to SaaS Backwards, a podcast that helps SaaS CEOs and go to market leaders accelerate growth and enhance profitability. Our guest today is Kerry Cunningham, who heads up research and thought leadership at 6sense, a sales and marketing platform that helps users unlock the ability to create, manage and convert high quality pipeline revenue.

Kerry also led the development of its recent report, the 6sense Buyer Experience Report 2024. Hey, Kerry, welcome to the podcast. 

[00:00:42] Kerry: Thanks, Ken. Great to be here. 

[00:00:44] Ken: It's great to have you and I'm really excited to record your episode. But before we dig in, could you please tell our listeners a little more about yourself, 6sense, and the Buyer Experience Report?

[00:00:55] Kerry: Yeah, absolutely. I'll go in that order. So I've been with 6sense for about three years. I run this research and thought leadership practice, which is still pretty unusual in software companies, particularly of our size. But it's the same job I had for about eight years prior to coming to 6sense.

I was an analyst with Serious Decisions and then Forrester after they acquired Serious Decisions. And so what I do now is very, very similar to what I had done before. And Apart from doing lots of research, which we'll talk about, I speak with 150 or so practitioners every year.

I have a lot of one on one sessions or a lot of one on few sessions with marketers. So I spend a lot of time still really engaged directly with marketers. And then prior to all the analyst stuff, I spent most of my career. In B2B running a B2B teleservices agency in the Bay Area.

And then I also have some academic research experience, which really informs what we do now. So I spent four or so years. Working in academic research labs after we sold a company I've been a part of for a long time. So that's me. 6sense as you said, platform for B2B sales and marketers.

But I think the key thing to know about 6sense is it's AI first and always has been. So using AI to identify your ICP, but most importantly, and we'll talk about this. To understand which of the accounts that you're interested in are actually in market and where they are in the process, because that's really the first, most important thing that organizations mostly aren't doing today and still need to do.

And yeah, so I hope that the buyer experience study, we'll, we'll talk a lot about that. This is the second year that we've done it. Just super fascinating to be able to do this research and we're seeing some things that are pointing us in some different directions than we've been looking in before.

[00:02:43] Ken: Yeah. I mean, I think having someone like yourself on the team gives 6sense a real leg up in building thought leadership and proprietary insights that you guys can use to accelerate your own growth. And that's kind of exciting to see 

[00:02:59] Kerry: for me. I'm going to record that for my performance evaluation this year.

Thank you. 

[00:03:04] Ken: Hey, I'll do what I can to help. But let's, let's dig into the conversation. You know, a lot of this is based on the findings out of that report, but not entirely. So let's, dig in. One of the things we talked about last time was that the vast preponderance of buyers are initiating the first conversation they have with vendors.

And I think we need to talk about what this means for traditional outbound sales and demand gen seems like that's pretty consequential finding. 

[00:03:34] Kerry: Yeah, I'm glad you picked that one out because what we found really does turn the way that we've thought about how B2B revenue production works on its head.

And so. If you think about the whole enterprise of B2B demand gen, which is really lead production and then the follow up through BDRs and, and delivering to sales these leads, the whole idea has been based on this notion that, one, you can trick people into filling out forms on your website if you put relevant enough content there and then having done that you can send your BDRs and SDRs to hound them until they meet with you and start a sales process. That's the model. But what buyers say is that they engage with you at around 70% of the way through their buying journey and they engage with you only when and if they're ready.

So we ask buyers, when you had your first conversation with sellers, did you initiate that or did the seller? And as you point out, 85% of the time, the buyer says that they initiated that. Now we also asked, were you receiving calls and emails prior to the time you engaged? And the answer is like 50% of buyers say they were getting calls and emails weeks and months before they engaged.

And some, you know, the, the rest days and weeks before they finally engaged. So it's not like they're just sitting there, on their own, doing their research without anybody calling or emailing. No, they're getting calls and emails. They ignore them until they're ready. And I think what I like to do, especially with marketers, is just ask you to think about your own experience when you've been in a buying process.

Did the fact that A BDR was emailing and calling you change your behavior or the timing of when you engaged? And I think if you ask yourself that question, you come back with, well, of course not. You know, engage when ready, right? That's what everybody does. 

[00:05:29] Ken: it's unlikely that you're going to instigate a buying process where no need is really recognized and being acted on.

So, you know, the, the best you can hope for is either you get there as people are really gearing up a buying process or your thought leadership, your work to be part of the discussion helps a realization occur or comes at the time where the realization is happening. So it's, it's not like your content or your outreach is completely irrelevant, but it's certainly, you know, like if I don't need a car, I'm not car shopping.

If I don't need a new ERP, I'm not ERP shopping. You know, I have to have a belief that I have the need to fill here. And I think that's it's really being underlined here, but also, the fact that they recognize that they're being, engaged with, you know, you might be seeping into their consciousness.

[00:06:26] Kerry: Sure. Yeah. I think the point that you made to start off was is incredibly important. You know, we know from research that's been done by other folks in academic institutions. We know from our own research that, you know, only about 5% of the accounts that you might be interested in are going to buy in any quarter. Our data that comes directly from our platform says it's between 1% and 3% for most kinds of businesses and the rest of your audience is either somewhere in a early stages of a buying process or not in market.

It looks like probably 60, 65% of companies are not in market at all. And especially if you think about SaaS. So, in SaaS, where there's a standard kind of two year contract for folks, half of the companies, on average, in any given category, are in the first year of a two year contract, and so they're not in market.

That's 50% of your audience, right? They're not going to be buying. And then some number of the rest of the people who are in year two are happy, contented, and are not going to go into market. So that's just, in SaaS, that's the way it is. So, you know, there's another piece of that market that is thinking about maybe they're going to change.

That may be 25%, 35% of your target audience. You need to be in front of them and you need to be in front of them effectively. But most of them are also not going to buy and they're certainly not going to do it this quarter. It's going to take a couple of quarters at least. Even if your marketing wakes up the desire in that account to change the solution that they have or to get something new. If it's not in this year's budget for most of you It's not going to happen this year, right?

Your, your solution costs more than what they have in their discretionary funds. And so if it isn't there now it's probably not going to happen this year. And even if it does happen this year, the process of going through getting consensus on what they're going to do in buying is probably two, three quarters at least.

And so your marketing today is producing pipeline a quarter, two quarters, three quarters from now. But it's not producing the pipeline that you're getting today. 

[00:08:35] Ken: in my head, you know, my advertising copywriter head, it's like marketing today, pipeline tomorrow. Right. You know, it's, it's going to take a little bit more than a day to generate that pipeline.

[00:08:45] Kerry: Yeah. 

[00:08:45] Ken: And I think just to set the table, 

we kinda, sat at the table of where we set it. This is really for kind of enterprise level software we're talking about. If it's something like Canva, that's a discretionary spend. If it's under a few hundred dollars a month, ARR this conversation really doesn't apply to you.

You can, you can move along. But if you're selling something with a 40 to $50, 000 minimum annual commitment and up, these things take some time. They do. 

[00:09:13] Kerry: So in our buyer experience report the participants in our survey had a minimum 10k annual contract value and about, you know, 15%, 20% of the respondents are in that category, but we also have substantial volumes that go up into the, into the millions.

And, we've had over the two years now, about 3, 500 responses to the survey. So we have a pretty good sample across all the different kind of solution cost ranges. 

[00:09:39] Ken: that's an amazing resource just in two years to, to be drawing from. And later in the podcast and also in our email, we're going to offer a link that people can go get the report from 6sense because I think it's that important.

Digging in on the, the findings a little bit. I think this is the one that also kind of startled me was the idea the buyers already knew pretty much who they were going to be evaluating. You know, if you, if you're not on the shortlist, you're not going to be on the shortlist. It's kind of how I read that.

Do you want to elaborate a little bit more on that? How should our listeners be trying to adapt their marketing and sales strategies to this reality. 

[00:10:23] Kerry: Yeah, this is a, this is a second dimension in which we kind of flip with the way we've thought about this on our heads. When you think about how most B2B marketing programs and plans are put together, it's based on the assumption that a buyer is going to begin their buying journey by doing general research about the category.

Try to understand the category and then who are the players in the category and maybe they get a month or two into the thing and they, they're coming to your website and they're digging into your content and comparing you to somebody else. But I think even before I give the numbers, just logically think about that for a minute.

 So again, for purchases that are over 10k, but certainly 40, 50k or higher who the buyers are, you know, they're not the new kid out of college they're the people who are running departments and those people are minimum 10 years in the business probably 15, 20 or more. And so they've been around. The category that you operate in is probably not a brand new category.

It's probably a category that's been around for a while. And so the people who have been in their businesses for a while, working in and running these departments, they've been through sales cycles with you before. They've been through, maybe they've been a customer in a different company before. And then even when you think about people who are not your target persona, like the, the finance person who has to ratify this purchase, the purchasing department people, the I.T. people who might get involved, they're all, these older people, right?

They're all people who've been around for a while. So that's something that I think we haven't really comprehended before. Haven't really thought about the fact that these guys have been around for a while. And so the numbers, what I think you're, you're pointing to, the numbers are that out of the five average vendors that a buyer puts on their shortlist, four of them are known on day one and they buy from one of those four 90 % of the time. So that's the thing that, you know. One, you better be on that day one shortlist, you know, your ability to get on it afterwards is very low, but they're going to buy from that day one shortlist most of the time and then that leads us there could lead us into a discussion of really what's going on in that buying process, where you have an average buying group of 11 in our survey. All 11 of those people, regardless of their role in the buying process, all 11 will say roughly that they know four out of the five vendors.

So, the I.T. People purchasing people, they all do. And so they show up, you know, okay, we're gonna replace our ERP system or we're gonna look at potential systems to do X, Y and Z. They show up on day one with experience with those brands and with experience comes opinions. And so you don't have a buying group where you're just going to educate them on you versus the competitor.

They walk into it with a view on that. And then the question is, is that view good for us? Is that view based on current understanding of where we are and where we sit and our solutions and all that? Is what we're saying today consistent with what people have seen in the past or would have seen in a buying process two years ago?

So I think a lot to think about there. 

[00:13:38] Ken: I think the, the intuitive approach has been, well, we can't be naive when we talk to potential buyers. So our content It can't be naive, right? We need to show that we demonstrate understanding of our business ourselves and the business, our, our prospects and customers are in. But what this is saying is you really need to generate some kind of intellectual friction, if not prior business use in order to be in selection process at all. 

[00:14:07] Kerry: Yeah. I think one, there should be a lot more research by marketers on how experienced and knowledgeable your buyers are. Everybody who will be involved in making that decision. How experienced and knowledgeable they are with your brand, because that's gonna vary a lot. Like if you're a brand that's been around for a long time, assume that everybody who's gonna be involved in buying you has some direct experience with your brand.

Probably that comes through buying processes where they did not buy you, right? So there are five vendors in every buying process and only one gets bought. The odds are that unless you dominate a category completely, most of the people who had buying experience with you have had that experience in a buying process where they did not pick you, so think about that, do you know why buyers weren't buying you a year or two years ago? Because that's what's in their mind today when they show up to look at you. I don't, you know, I know that there are marketers who are smart and who are out there looking at that, but probably not nearly enough that are looking at that and really need to be thinking about what does that mean about how we position our brand today, what we say, what we don't say.

[00:15:14] Ken: Right. Should your messaging be updated for new capability, new approach to customer success, whatever, whatever it is that's new. Also, I think there's often remorse, right? When people buy a product, you know, there's a good chance it's not going to be what they hoped it would be. And like I know that we we've certainly used, I don't know, five or six project management

pieces of software over the last 10 years, you know, more remorse than success, to be honest. Yeah. so I think that also opens, you know, a potential window into, you know, the buyer psychology that you might be able to use as you try and compete more effectively. 

[00:15:53] Kerry: Yeah. 

[00:15:54] Ken: Well, I want to turn my attention to something that I think is a little

near and dear to your heart. Another finding that came out of this report. And to be honest, first time I've heard such an affirmation. So it looks like industry analysts are really important in this level of software purchase, perhaps more important than, you know, earlier career, or marketers even might recognize or be aware of. And how do you see the role of analysts today? And, you know, over the next year or so, and what should we be doing with analyst relations as a software marketers? You know, I don't hear enough about this and we used to run a really big PR practice and it was sort of in every program for a software company.

analyst relations figured, you know, loomed large, figured large. So what's your take? 

[00:16:42] Kerry: Yeah, my take is that what you're saying is, is absolutely right. And so, you know, I've got some bias, I'm a former analyst. But the data is not biased. The data says that in SaaS, over 80% of buyers consult with either consultants or analysts and sometimes both 30%, 40%, it's both.

So I think the way to think about this also helps unlock a way to think about the buying process generally, which is that these are big decisions for people. They are putting their year on the line, in some cases, if it's a big enough purchase. Their career on the line, their job on the line, these are big things and they're not going to undertake these big decisions without getting enough input that whether the thing works or doesn't work, they can point and say, look, I did everything I could have done to make the right decision here.

there's a lot of de-risking decisions that happens within the buying group that we could talk about. But a big part of, I think, the role of the analyst is exactly that. Look, we, we brought in Gartner, we brought in Forrester, we brought in Bain, we brought in, you know, whoever, that helped us decide what to do.

And when you're saying that, what you're saying is, so don't blame me if it doesn't go well. Perfectly legit. I mean, that's, we all need to be doing that in our careers. So, when we think of Gartner and Forrester, I think, in particular, we think of waves and quadrants, and those can be really important.

I mean, you know, everybody in SaaS knows how important it can be to find yourself in the upper right hand corner of one of those things. That's really great. But what I think most people don't have enough in their mind. Most marketers don't have enough in their mind Is how many of your potential buyers an analyst is talking with directly in a given year?

And it's lots, right? It's hundreds and so in those conversations As an analyst you're having a conversation with your client. You are going to de risk your advice So you're not going to advise your

customer to do something that your afraid won't work out. If you advise, you know, this is a great, but you should take a look at them and it doesn't go well, you have caused this client of yours to be in enormous pain. And they're probably not gonna be a client anymore. So an analyst is thinking of that as well. And an analyst has the situation where they get to hear from.

Even when people aren't calling and asking advice about the vendors, they're telling you about how it's going with the vendors that they have. So an analyst is not just going through the cycle where they produce a wave or a quadrant. They're actually talking to your prospects and customers all the time and have great insight on what it's like to be your customer and how different that experience is from say what you market

and what you say in the public. And it's an analyst job to take what they hear from all of these conversations and to spin it back to their, clients. That's what they get paid for, right? Here's what I know from talking to 50 other folks in your job about working with this kind of vendor. it's a sizable chunk of people every year. 

[00:19:48] Ken: Yeah, they're, they're really synthesizing information from almost every constituency, right? So it's the partners, the users, competitors. You know, they have different, I think if you haven't done analyst relations, and it's a little bit of a detour here, but if you haven't done it, it's not just you want to get into the report itself.

You know, you want to, use your relationship with an analyst firm if you're paying, to solicit that kind of feedback that can help you with product management, messaging, prospect targeting. I mean, there's so many things about those consultative calls that go well beyond trying to fit into report production which may have even greater value.

 And in turn, if you are thoughtful and dig in, in that relationship and build a true relationship with the analyst, you have a better shot of reasonable consideration for those reports. So I think that it's maybe it's time, maybe one of the big findings here of our conversation is it's time to refocus on analyst relations as a as an important tool in the marketers toolbox.

[00:20:53] Kerry: You know, if I could add one more thing to that, cause I think that's a great point. Don't try to sell the analyst, the way you would sell a customer that they're not susceptible to it. One, they're not buying. That's not the way they're looking at it. And they're talking to everybody else. So, they know if what you're saying is.

not backed up by the experience and the product. And, you know, if you're talking about brand new things that nobody's seen before, you know, you're going to hype up your version of it, but understand that, you know, the analyst is actually going to talk to people who use it and then they'll know. And you know, and one thing you should do, yes, solicit that feedback.

And I would do that all the time with our vendor customers and say, look, here's what I'm hearing about. You know, that messaging or the use of the product and all of that. And just have, you know, real conversations with folks. These are, these are people talking to your customers all the time. I don't know an analyst who doesn't want the vendors to do well, but they want the vendors to support the practitioners in doing their jobs well.

And that's really the first most important thing about that. That's what the analyst wants is for their client to be successful so that they keep their clients and their clients keep paying the money. So if the analyst doesn't think that you're going to give them that, then they're not going to be recommending that you're on the short list.

[00:22:13] Ken: Yeah and I think also make sure you understand analyst relations is sort of saying have a relationship with these people. 

[00:22:19] Kerry: Right. 

[00:22:20] Ken: You're trying to build an honest dialogue and be a good partner in that process 

[00:22:26] Kerry: just one other real quick thing here. Listen to the language that the analysts used to describe the problem that you solve and use that language.

You know, rather than making up your own language about what the problem is or what the solution is because when you use your own language, it just really makes it hard for your buyers to compare what you do with the competitors. Now, if you need to make it hard for them to compare, then that's a different problem that you have. But that doesn't help buyers.

[00:22:53] Ken: Yeah, if you actually fit in a category, call it what it is, right? So I want to talk about dynamic and buying committees. And we've sort of come up with an idea or a fake person.

We call the chief no decision officer. And I think the gut feel is that a lot of decisions are not made, right? That the closed loss is often on a no decision and that's where we came up with that sort of fanciful title. But I'm wondering what your experience and research tells you about internal stakeholders who might derail a purchase, you know, drive a lack of consensus and, and what can we be doing from a marketing and sales standpoint to try and combat that?

[00:23:39] Kerry: Yeah, great question. And one I'm really focused on because the research does show, like I was saying earlier, you've got on average 11 people, you know, but if it's six for you or five, or if it's 20, the story is the same. You've got a group of people, that group of people enter the process with experience and with opinions.

And they're, mostly people who are decision makers, senior people in their organization. So they're going to come with egos, they're going to come believing that they're right, and they're right and they have different ideas about that. Somehow that group has to come to consensus about what the organization is going to buy.

That takes 70% of the buying process. And when we look at the numbers for how many accounts actually buy in a quarter versus how many. Go out into market, you know, it's like 30, 35% of accounts go into a buying process, but only about, you know, 1 to 4 or 5% come out of that buying process having made a purchase.

So you're losing the vast majority of companies that go into market in any given quarter. The vast majority of those are not going to end up buying anything or they'll just stick with what they have, right? There's some great research from LinkedIn and Bain, I think partnership where they found that of the buying processes that end without buying something 30 to 40% of those are because they just couldn't agree.

They just couldn't come to consensus about what to do. So. One, in SaaS, your messaging is probably aimed squarely at your primary buyer persona, the person who runs the business department that you serve, right? So that's great. But if your messaging is, we are the, the latest technology, the most advanced, the greatest this.

That appeals to that persona, the financial person who has to ratify it and who could be that chief no decision officer, the purchasing person, the IT people, they could all be that chief no decision officer. They don't care very much about your messaging that's all great for your primary persona. What they care about is how does it impact the business in other ways.

And so, if you're not supporting your primary personas in getting your brand across the line with messaging that makes you feel nice and safe and financially responsible decision, then you're going to have a hard time getting to the end of those cycles and getting the win. Same thing with the I.T. folks.

If you're not compatible, if you're not, if you don't have the right certifications and then whatever else for your solution, then you're going to lose the support of those people who ultimately have to say yes. They have veto power. They're not going to put you into a sales cycle probably, but they have power to say no.

And if you're not supporting your primary persona in making that argument internally, then you're going to lose more than you should. And I think we have to think about that whole buying process, that first 70 % where they really pick a winner, it's just a long arm wrestling match over which vendor is going to get chosen.

It's not a bunch of people educating themselves from scratch about your category and your solution. It's from day one arm wrestling over which vendor is going to be chosen. And, you know, the brands that, support those key decision, no decision maker, no decision officers I think you have a great advantage.

[00:27:06] Ken: Yeah. And, you know, the one we're hearing, you know, in our own work now is change management, you know, like the general manager, ops manager, you know, weighing against a decision because he or she doesn't want to, they want to be sure that the impact on the organization is going to be managed. And if they don't get that comfort level that you're going to.

Be able to make the transition in a manageable way, they're going to veto the deal. So it's, it really is a broad variety of roles that have this, this veto power. It 

[00:27:40] Kerry: really is. By the way, if you're a big brand in the space, you have a huge advantage here, right? So if you're a big brand, even just in your category, then chances are very good that those other people who have veto power will know who you are.

They'll know that people have been buying you for years. They'll know that you are not a crazy choice. So, you've got an advantage there. If you're a newcomer, new to a space, new to a category, you've got a bunch of reputation, brand marketing work to do to make sure that you're not getting cut down by these folks whose interests are different from your primary persona.

[00:28:19] Ken: Yeah, you need to be the reasonable or safe choice, right? For people that who aren't going to operate the system, right? They don't want to be associated with a failed decision. So, you have to make it safe for everybody. want to ask a question now about, if we're really not educating people about our category. I guess we're educating about our brand, what makes us different.

How does that look in terms of demand generation from the early stage of a process to enabling people through that, that research? I mean, it sounds like they're not really researching. So, I mean, I'm almost not sure how to even pose the question here. You know, what's a marketer to do, 

[00:28:58] Kerry: Yeah 

[00:28:59] Ken: You know, assuming that people pretty much think they know what they're doing in decision making.

[00:29:05] Kerry: That's right. So I think, you know, first of all, think about your category. If, your category that you operate in has been around for even 5 or 10 years, then there's a pretty good chance that the people who were involved in buying you including the veto power folks know who you are already.

And, you probably have been through a buying process or two where , your brand was involved. So what do they need from you to help get them through their buying journey and have you on the top of the list? They don't need to learn about the category. Like if your category has been around for a number of years, that's not what they primarily need.

What they primarily need is how are you going to help solve our problems differently and better than we're doing it now and differently and better than your competitors can. How can you make sure that you're the most fiscally responsible choice? Or what you do is so much better than everybody else is that it doesn't need to be in the short term and it can be otherwise whatever your positioning there is it's got to be clear and consistent and it's got to be such that, those veto power buyers are able to nod and say, yes, I get it.

So I think much more focus on that. if you're in a brand new category, which is probably not more than 20% of B2B sales, you know, that's, that's a lot, but it's not the majority. And you're probably, if you're listening to this now, it's probably not you, right? So be realistic about your category.

If it's been around for 5,10,15,20, years. All that time you spend on the early stage white papers and all of that, that's great for the very most junior people in the companies that you're selling to, but the people have been around that you need to make decisions. They want to move on from that. They've got that, you know, check that off the list now, get them content that's going to help them support the case for buying you.

And that's definitely a little deeper. And then the other thing is, you know where you're not terribly differentiated, you got to be better to do business with. And so like you've got to be providing experiences and doing things with your content and otherwise that make you appear to be a better brand to do business with. And that means your information is readily available and clear.

You're not hiding things behind forms. You're not chasing me with BDRs hounding me for meetings when I'm not going to meet with you yet. You're handling all of those moments well so that you seem like a good and reasonable partner to do business with. It's much more of a, process of, of auditioning for the role of partner than it is educating your customer.

[00:31:34] Ken: I love that. I think that's so true. And I think too many software companies are very focused at the beginning of this learning curve, as opposed to the, you know, the dating game that is, becoming the next software platform we're going to implement, right? Let's turn our attention just a little bit to how these findings are Being realized that 6sense, what are you guys doing differently?

You know, you've got a couple of years where you're building your own proprietary research world, sharing some important parts of that with us. But, how are we going to learn from watching you guys operate? 

[00:32:11] Kerry: Yeah, and by the way, everybody should. So 6sense takes that role very seriously.

We're a, a company of marketers who sell to marketers, so, what I'm gonna explain are a couple of things that we do that we want everybody to do. And so we learn a lot from, you know, just trying to, to help guide and teach our customers how to, market more effectively. So, one is that whatever your brand voice, brand personality needs to be for your buyer persona. You need to get your voice and your personality into the community of practitioners that you support.

when buyers are going to enter a buying process with four out of the five vendors on the shortlist already, how do you get to be one of those? Well, what 6sense does, for instance, is we sponsor a thing called CMO Coffee Talk and it's a online community, mostly in Slack, but there are two meetings a week one for East Coast, one for West Coast, 

U.S. times, and each of those meetings has a hundred or so CMOs on it, but there's like a thousand or so CMOs signed up in the group. And guess what? We sell to CMOs. So, we support this community. We provide the space that a lot of CMOs get tremendous value from. We don't manage the meetings that's done by somebody else done by a third party.

There's no pitchings, you know, 6sense never talks about their product or solution and nobody talks about theirs. But our primary buyer is getting value from 6sense through that all the time. And we have a number of those. We do the same thing for BDRs. We do the same thing. We have other communities as well.

So, if you're a CMO, there's a very good chance you not only know 6sense, but you're getting value from us, even if you've never been through a buying process. My whole job is an aspect of that, right? So you come to 6sense.com/research. It's the easiest way to get there. And you'll see this site called the science of B to B.

And every, every piece of research we've ever done is there free and without a form. It's a service to our community. you know, We're participating as active value adding members of the community that, yeah, we want to do business with. But that's what we believe you need to do. And what's going to get you on the top of that short list when buyers go into market.

And that's great for our brand. Now, if you sell to engineers or something, you know, we do sell to marketers and our brand is big and fun and party and all of that. That's, that's great. That's kind of what marketers like. But if you sell to engineers, your brand ought to look like what engineers like, not what marketers like. And then you need to be where those marketers are. So those are a number of the things I'll give you another great example. If we see, if you're an account that's in our ICP and we see that you've just gone into market, like we can see in the intent data that you've just gone into market, if your CMO is not already part of the coffee talk group, that person's going to get an invite immediately, Your BDR leader is going to get an invite to our BDR community. You may, if you're one of our accounts, if you're connected to me in some way on LinkedIn, you'll get an invitation to have a one on one with Kerry about strategy. All of those things, the way that we start off is, great, you're in market. We're gonna deliver some value to you. We're not asking for an immediate meeting. We know you're not going to do that. Here's some things that we think you'll value. Here's also some content we think, you know, is, is useful and interesting for somebody in your role. All of those things develop.

This sense of preference for your brand, and I think that's a huge part of what organizations need to be thinking about today. None of the things, I mean, I am, but none of the other things I talked about are particularly expensive. You know, they're, they take time. you're not going to run the, create a community group play for pipeline this quarter but if you start it today you'll develop pipeline a couple of quarters down the line and it's a gift that just keeps on giving. So those kinds of things are really important.

The other thing I would just say is, never, ever miss an in flight buying process. We know that, you know, it's not more than 30% of your market probably, and very few of them are actually going to get down to the part where they actually buy, so never, ever miss one. And that's something that, you know, we're very good at internally.

[00:36:28] Ken: That's great. I think that's a great place to land our episode. Kerry Cunningham, thank you so much for being with us today. If people do want to connect with you on LinkedIn are you easy enough to find? 

[00:36:39] Kerry: I am, yep. Just Kerry Cunningham on LinkedIn. There's not that many Kerry Cunninghams, and I think the only one in this, space you'll find me pretty easily.

[00:36:46] Ken: if folks wanna access the research, could you just give us that URL one more time please? 

[00:36:51] Kerry: 6sense.com/research. And where you're gonna land is in a site called the Science of B2B. That's our kind of sub-brand for the research stuff, but it's all, all right there. Everything I've talked about.

And if you find me on LinkedIn, I post on LinkedIn every day and there's a link to all of the research there as well. 

[00:37:09] Ken: That's great. Thanks. And if people wanna reach me, I'm on LinkedIn/in/kenlempit probably the only one. And our demand generation agency for software as a service firms is Austin Lawrence.

And if you haven't subscribed to the SaaS backwards podcast, please do so wherever they're distributed. Kerry, thanks so much for being a guest today. 

[00:37:31] Kerry: Thanks for having me. Great conversation. Appreciate it. 

[00:37:33] Ken: Likewise. That was awesome.