Chapter 4: Improving SQO: Closed Won

Marketing can have a huge influence on the sales cycle by keeping prospects engaged, speeding up the buyer’s journey, and improving closed-won rates.

The key here is improving alignment. Sales and marketing must work together to identify top accounts and contacts for marketing to target and nurture through personalised campaigns.

This ensures you reach as many decision-makers and buying committee members as possible to help accelerate the sales process.

1. Multi-threading

As sales processes become more challenging, getting buy-in from multiple stakeholders is important when closing a deal.

Influence doesn’t sit neatly above or below a set of titles or hierarchy. That’s why building influence to shape conversations and move deals forward is key.

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Multi-threading helps build relationships with multiple decision-makers throughout the buying process to accelerate sales.

A multi-threaded approach can achieve a 36% lift in win rates compared to single-threaded deals.

Gong’s research also found a 546% increase in win rates when shifting from 1 to 4 actively engaged contacts per target account.

The impact of multi-threading is clear and the key to winning enterprise deals.

The average contacts per deal size at Cognism are as follows:

• $25k - $50k ARR - 4 stakeholders 
• $50k - $100k ARR - 7 stakeholders 
• $100k - $250k ARR - 15 stakeholders 
• $1 million ARR upwards - 20 stakeholders 

In fact, 70 people were involved in a large deal which Cognism recently closed. Of these, 10-12 were decision makers, and 3 - 4 were procurement and legal.

That is why marketing teams must consider deal acceleration and multi-threading as part of their wider strategy. 

Marketing can help sales ensure your company stays top of mind, re-engage unresponsive contacts and build out the wider buying committee.

Your sales team can determine the key stakeholders involved in the purchasing decision, including decision-makers, champions, influencers and end users. This target list can guide your marketing efforts.

1. a. Collaborating on thought leadership content

As James Isilay, CEO of Cognism, explained:

“There are many extra activities you can do to support multi-threading. One is to provide executive support and tap into your executive’s network to support the pipeline. Another is to gift through Reachdesk and Sendoso to help build connections and relationships.”

“You can also encourage connections through mutual thought leadership collaboration. This could include workshops or podcasts.”

“This threads marketing messaging through the sales process to ensure you have a good narrative around your positioning against competitors. Almost every element of SaaS is more competitive than ever, so you need a great narrative around your product and differentiation.”

At Cognism, this is where the demand generation team has been extra thoughtful in their approach.

France is a new market for Cognism, having launched in September 2023.

When entering a new region, you want to get those first few deals to solidify the go-to-market motion, so it’s important for marketing to generate awareness in this region while also building a good-fit pipeline.

Cognism used its media machine as a way to both build awareness and accelerate deals.

For example, the DG team in France invited one of the key stakeholders from a target account onto their podcast, Le Ring and organised a content collaboration project.

In addition, they partnered with other well-known companies in the region to host a joint live event and invited the Head of Sales from this target account to join.

Involving and engaging with these key stakeholders in this way  helped close a new six-figure deal and accelerate it from SQO to closed won.

The DG team have continued this approach globally across its three core personas and their respective podcasts.

1. b. Building and nurturing relationships

At Cognism, the DG team followed a similar strategy regarding post-event activation plans.

If you have valuable conversations at events that become opportunities, it’s important to show that you can become a true partner in this space and not just another vendor. That means ensuring you are being value-led in your follow-ups.

For example, the marketing team at Cognism recently attended an event that helped to connect with marketing leaders and CMOs, a primary persona at Cognism.

After the event, the marketing team met with sales to gather post-event feedback and discuss the best way to follow up on all the meetings that took place. 

This went beyond talking about Cognism’s core product offerings, and the sales team cultivated deeper discussions around each company’s strategy and future goals.

The DG team then mailed these accounts a copy of the book ‘Diary of a CMO’ by Alice De Courcy, Chief Marketing Officer at Cognism.

This was to demonstrate our similar strategies, goals and challenges and share all our learnings. This approach allowed Cognism to stand out from the noice. There was no ask here, it was just to provide value, showcase our authentic content and help nurture these accounts.

These dedicated follow-ups resulted in some great feedback. Cognism then had the opportunity to present its strategy shift to one of the account’s marketing teams at an in-person meeting at one of the largest telco companies in Europe.

2. Account-based marketing

Account-based marketing campaigns can also help engage targeted high-value accounts, streamline the sales cycle, and convert these accounts into sales.

At Cognism, the DG and paid teams work closely with sales to generate awareness within large enterprise accounts and open opportunities.

Campaigns can follow a 1:1, 1:few or 1:many approach.

1:1 campaigns look to engage as many buying committee members as possible through high-touch, personalised campaigns and value-led messaging.

Whilst 1:few campaigns have a broader reach than 1:1 campaigns, they still have targeted messaging and low-touch personalisation where possible, and they will usually favour enterprise segments.

1:many campaigns have a much broader reach and contain limited personalisation but target specific verticals. Here, the marketing team looks to maximise its reach across multi-channel campaigns and third-party partnerships/newsletters.

1. a. Identifying core accounts

At Cognism, the marketing team selects accounts that have reached a certain engagement score criteria, tracked in N.Rich, an ABM advertising tool. They then used Qualified, a pipeline generation tool, to track target accounts, measure their level of engagement and identify which accounts are engaging with both our ads and high-intent pages on our website.

The marketing team also bases account selection around account behaviour, including first-party intent data. 

This allows them to be hyper-focused on the most active accounts and tailor the content and messaging around their activity, including what specific web pages the account is visiting.

They then meet with the sales team to align and confirm whether these accounts are a good fit and create an account plan and weekly check-ins with the relevant account executives. 

The marketing team work on these accounts until they lead to one of the following: 

• They become a customer and progress to closed-won
• They are no longer a good fit, and the account has been dropped by sales or reached closed-lost
• They meet the agreed test cost-per-acquisition threshold with no positive results.

1. b. Account research

It’s important to conduct thorough research on your target account to understand its industry, pain points, business objectives, and each team’s challenges and goals. 

This helps cultivate trust and rapport with all members of the buying group. 

Gather information and understand each stakeholder’s roles, responsibilities and priorities within the organisation and how they relate to your services’ value so that you can craft your messaging accordingly.

As James Isilay explained: 

“At Cognism, we want to ensure we don’t burn opportunities. If you have an opportunity, you want to make sure you’re doing the work to make it successful.”

“You have to build a case for those key decision-makers. How you communicate your product value will differ for each decision-maker. Customers now expect vendors to speak to all the different layers of their organisation and figure out their pain points before proposing a solution.”

Other key things to consider are: 

• How much the AE has spoken to the account before, and what the past or current activity is from sales
• What the current activity looks like on a company level, and what web pages are they visiting
• Which ads are being engaged with the most
• What personas are the most active
• If you can identify user activity to tailor content to each persona

1. c. Tracking the key touch points

Targeting as many contacts as possible across the buying committee with highly relevant and personalised content and offers is important. Here are the steps the DG team at Cognism follows:

Step 1: Content mapping

Start by looking at the most engaged assets and map this to relevant events and series that you can use to engage the relevant persona.

You can also work with the content team to understand if you should create any bespoke content.

Think about hyper-personalising messaging and content for the unique users you’ve identified, then understand how to engage the rest of the buying committee with persona-related content.

Step 2: Activity and channel mapping

Work out how you will maximise existing channels and which new ones to explore.

This could include:

• Asking internal subject matter experts to connect with relevant contacts on LinkedIn 
• Utilising SME offerings, including 1:1 training 
• Personalising ReachDesk gifting 
• Creating bespoke email sequences 
• Creating and capturing demand paid ads
• Creating display ads

Step 3: Activation plan

Remember to map out all the activity internally and set clear deadlines. It’s also important to remain clear on your goals and how to track results.

These campaigns should be checked and optimised weekly, looking at all the activities and results per channel. 

Ensure you have regular check-ins with sales and a feedback loop to share any information uncovered from their initial conversations.

Discuss any insights and data collected here. Marketing should capture any feedback from sales and adapt their messaging and approach if needed.

2. d. Sales enablement

You want to provide your sales team with personalised sequences and content that aligns with your touchpoints.

At Cognism, the DG marketing team creates a sales enablement briefing document to support AEs with their outreach, including account research, personalised strategies, relevant messages and the proposed campaign plan. 

This includes the account headcount, tech stack, account history, and account behaviour.

Then, marketing can request specific resources from the sales team, including personalised demo videos or walk-throughs.

2. e. Reporting

When it comes to reporting and tracking ABM campaigns, the DG team looks at the following: 

• Spend
• Impressions
• Clicks
• Click-through rate
• Unique website visits
• Meetings booked
• Pipeline

They then compare these metrics to this account information: 

• Number of contacts in each account
• Percentage of contacts engaged
• Account contact list growth rate
• Annual contract value
• ROI
• Sales cycle
• Total time spent from opportunity creation to close date
• Time spent on every opportunity stage

Outside of pipeline metrics, Cognism measures how successful specific campaign elements have been in engaging the wider account. They report on the following:

• The number of unique users visiting high-intent web pages
• The number of contacts registering and attending our live events
• The number of contacts engaging with bespoke campaigns

They also look to understand which creatives and messaging are currently working. From this, Cognism found the following:

• Calling-out accounts and industries deliver better engagement
• Product demo videos/ static images perform considerably better than other ad formats
• Product value “Meme” themed ads or comic ads also perform well

These ABM campaigns have had a positive impact on win rates. They have seen increased engagement, shorter sales cycles, and bigger deal sizes with significantly more prospects involved in each deal.

3. Trial process

Sometimes, when customers don’t have access to your platform before buying it, it can lead to problems.

This could be because customers are not getting what they want from the platform or sales have oversold the product.

To combat this, the operations team at Cognism introduced a trial into the buying process to increase win rates and improve deal velocity. 

3. a. Support guides to assist the trial

To ensure the trial’s success, the customer market team created an all-in-one trial pack with

the key information highlighting how to get the most out of Cognism’s product.

Karin O’Grady, Global Head of Customer Marketing at Cognism, also built a SalesLoft cadence to support the AE and accompany the user throughout their trial.

Here, the prospect received a series of emails on day 1, day 3, and 5 of the trial.

The first email is similar to an onboarding pack. It walks them through a checklist for using the Chrome extension or connecting Cognism to their existing tools.

As Karin explained: 

“We included several walkable tours and resources to support the trial so they can make the most out of this process and try different workflows. This improves the likelihood of the trial being a success.”

“We send a second email when the prospect is at the midway point of the trial to check in and offer any more support, whilst the last email we send is more personalised and includes any useful tips. We cater this to their persona and how they could use the product. This would also include any additional content to check out and, ultimately, how to schedule a meeting.”

3. b. Understanding the impact

The data showed that the new business side saw a higher win rate and improved deal velocity when an opportunity had a trial compared to when it didn’t.

The presence of a trial also led to higher customer health scores both initially upon the start of a contract and across the contract in micro and SMB segments.

Across all segments and regions, the average contract value was higher, the chance of retention after the contract expired was higher, and the churn rate was reduced.