Blog · For every industry
Answers for every industry
Answers that hold whatever market you sell into, with the numbers and sources behind them.
20 answers · updated
expansion · · 7 minEnterprise expansion: treat each business unit as an account
Treat each business unit as its own target account. Score it on fit and signals, map the seats its buying group needs, and fill the next empty seat through a warm introduction from the unit that bought. Give each unit its own CRM record and each contact a role, then report engaged seats per unit against a baseline.
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forecasting · · 8 minGovtech deal stages that hold: funding, path and council date
Instead of demo and proposal, exit govtech stages on evidence the buyer controls: funding status, engaged budget and finance seats, the buying path (own solicitation, co-op contract or under the signing limit) and the meeting or signature that sets the close. Count a deal in a quarter only when its money is appropriated and that date falls inside it.
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buying-groups · · 6 minCredit union deal stuck at the champion? Plan the seats with her
Go up with your champion, not around her. Agree with her which of your people meets which seat above her, why and by when, starting with a CFO review of what the pilot proved. Count engaged seats on the deal each month. If no budget owner will meet you, call the pilot complete rather than extend it.
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buying-groups · · 7 minSelling SaaS to a utility: get finance and regulatory in early
At an investor-owned utility, a late “SaaS is opex” objection is a missing seat. At discovery, name finance, regulatory accounting and regulatory affairs. Give each an owner on your team and a question to settle, and keep the deal out of proposal until all 3 are engaged. Your champion opens doors but can’t answer for them.
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crm-hygiene · · 6 minHow fast does CRM contact data go stale? Measure your own rate
No measured rate fits every CRM. Official job data measure a single cause, people changing employer: 20.6% of US wage and salary workers had been with their employer a year or less in January 2026, as had 14.6% of employees aged 20–64 in Germany in 2025. Role changes add to that. Measure your own rate on 100 contacts.
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abm · · 7 minWhat proves ABM is working at €25k+? Not win rate in year one
Proof needs a comparison: target accounts against a pre-launch baseline and, where the list is big enough, a holdout of similar accounts. At €25k+, win rate can’t show it in year one: telling a 20% win rate from 30% takes 294 closed deals in each group (Illustrative). Judge year one on opportunity rate and buying-group coverage.
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ai · · 6 minHow RevOps teams use AI, and why few say it added pipeline
Day to day, RevOps teams use AI as a layer around the CRM: account research, call notes, CRM updates, scoring and deal-risk flags. People keep pricing and forecast calls. So far the reported payback is mostly time: in a 2026 survey of 300+ RevOps leaders, under 9% say AI helped generate more pipeline. Judge yours against a pre-rollout baseline.
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crm-hygiene · · 6 minCRM cleanup before lead scoring: fix the fields it reads first
Clean only the fields your score reads, to a set bar, before go-live. Our bar: duplicate accounts at 2% or less by normalised domain, 85% average fill on those fields for records created in the last 90 days, and a usable reason on 75% of lost deals. Then make the fields required at entry so they stay clean.
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forecasting · · 7 minWhy does a healthy pipeline still miss the forecast at €50k+?
A healthy-looking pipeline misses because it counts deals that won’t close. Research in HBR finds 40–60% of deals are lost to buyer indecision, and those deals stay open at stage value until someone closes them out. Stages often track seller activity instead of buyer commitment. With 20 deals of €75k, honest odds alone swing a quarter by ±34% (Illustrative).
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sales-marketing-alignment · · 7 minSales and marketing alignment at €25k+: agree on accounts first
Align on accounts first. At €25k+, sales and marketing should sign one short target account list, scored on fit and engagement, with tiers, owners and the buying-group roles each account needs. Then both teams report one number: how many of those buying groups are engaged and turning into pipeline. The MQL handoff count becomes a diagnostic.
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ai · · 7 minAI account research tools: judge each by the one job it does
The AI tools that help do one research job better than your team: researching the company, mapping its people or reading its signals. Today’s AI answers won’t settle it: 22 of the 27 pages they cite are vendors’ own. Test any tool on 10 accounts you know, and keep a person on every first touch.
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speed-to-lead · · 7 minSpeed-to-lead still matters at €25k+, however long the cycle
Yes. At €25k+, most buying groups rank their shortlist before asking for a demo. In 6sense’s 2025 survey, where cycles averaged 10.1 months, buyers first spoke to the eventual winner nearly 80% of the time. The studies behind the 5-minute rule and HBR’s 7× recorded no deal size. Our standard: a named owner replies within the hour.
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partner-selection · · 6 minFinding a GTM consultant in Germany: 4 checks before you hire
Use lists, directories and LinkedIn for names only: all 4 ‘best GTM agency’ lists cited in AI answers rank their own publisher first. Then check 4 things on a first call: they baseline before they start, build and document in your own stack, fix routing before adding volume and use only outreach that’s lawful for German recipients.
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account-scoring · · 7 minAccount scoring for ABM: set weights from won and lost deals
Score accounts on fit, engagement and intent. Set fit weights from your own closed-won and closed-lost deals: a segment earns fit points only if it wins at 1.5× the average rate or better on 10 or more closed deals. Count engagement only when several buying-group members are active. Intent orders the queue but doesn’t qualify an account.
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crm-hygiene · · 6 minIs your CRM data clean enough for AI recommendations?
For most B2B teams, not across the whole CRM, and not yet. Readiness is a property of one recommendation, not of the database. List the fields that recommendation reads, measure how complete, unique and current they are, then score a sample of its past advice against outcomes you already know. Act only where it holds up.
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pipeline-coverage · · 6 minPipeline coverage at €75k deals: count only what can close
Start from your own win rate: required coverage is 1 ÷ win rate, so a 25% win rate needs 4×. Count only opportunities that can close in the period. With a 6–9-month cycle, much of the open pipeline can't close this quarter, so 4× on total pipeline may be under 2× on what can. Fix stage definitions first.
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buying-group · · 8 minHow big is a B2B buying group? At €25k+, map 10 or more
A B2B buying group typically has 10–13 people inside the buying company, and about 22 once Forrester's outside influencers are added. At €25k+, map at least 10 named people across 5 roles, procurement included, rising to 20–25 above €150k. Then build agreement: Gartner found individually tailored content had a 59% negative impact on group consensus.
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buying-signals · · 8 minWhich buying signals show a B2B account is in market?
A B2B account is in market when several people from a fit account engage within a few weeks, ideally after a trigger such as a new leader, funding or a reorganisation. Fit is a gate, not a score. A lone intent surge or form fill is weak evidence: most accounts aren’t buying, and 6sense estimates vendors see 10–15% of research.
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gtm-audit · · 8 minWhat should a GTM audit check at €25k+ ACV? The 8 areas
A go-to-market (GTM) audit for a high-ACV B2B company should check 8 areas: ICP and ACV fit, account targeting, buying signals, speed-to-lead, qualification, CRM data, forecasting and handoffs. For each, ask one question, pull the evidence from your CRM and record at least one baseline metric. Judge accounts and buying groups, not lead volume.
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mql · · 8 minShould you still set an MQL target at €50k+ ACV?
No, not as the target. On average 13 people are involved in a B2B buying decision, and under 1% of leads close (Forrester). 6sense reports that fewer than 30% of eventual buyers ever fill a form on the winning vendor's site. At €50k+ ACV, keep demo requests as signals with fast follow-up. Target engaged accounts, buying-group coverage and pipeline.
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