Personnel changes create great prospecting opportunities. For example, when an executive is promoted internally, they typically look to make their mark in the first 90 days, including evaluating existing technology and services and buying new ones. Getting in front of these executives early gives you the chance to influence their agenda and increase your odds of winning a deal. Plus, a new job is a natural conversation starter, since people are already fielding plenty of congratulations from their extended networks. Personnel moves can also reveal strategic changes at a company. For example, knowing which companies are expanding in data science or corporate finance can tell you a lot about where they’re headed in the near future.

Company news can predict an organization’s readiness to purchase. When significant company news happens — such as the opening of a new facility, the relocation an office, or company-wide layoffs — your sales and marketing teams should move quickly and reach out to new buying groups. However, it's difficult and time-consuming to track company news. With ZoomInfo's Scoops function, automated triggers and actions can keep track of company news. Instead of manually adding contacts to campaigns and lists, you'll be able to stay focused on fostering customer relationships, prospecting sales, and closing deals.

Company news can predict an organization’s readiness to purchase. When significant company opportunity news happens, such as new products or market initiatives, your sales and marketing teams should move quickly and reach out to new buying groups. However, it's difficult and time-consuming to track these constant movements and developments. With ZoomInfo's Scoops function, automated triggers and actions can track new opportunities. Instead of manually adding contacts to campaigns and lists, you'll be able to stay focused on fostering customer relationships, prospecting sales, and closing deals.

Company news can predict an organization’s readiness to purchase. When significant company financial news happens, such as mergers and acquisitions, your sales and marketing teams should move quickly and reach out to new buying groups. However, it's difficult and time-consuming to track companies' financial news. With ZoomInfo's Scoops function, you can track these moves in real-time using automated triggers and actions. Instead of manually adding contacts to campaigns and lists, you'll be able to stay focused on fostering customer relationships, prospecting sales, and closing deals.

Setting up scoring models to target the best-fit, highest priority accounts is essential for optimizing outbound prospecting performance. Many scoring models rely on CRM data to seed and train the model to return an ideal customer profile—but that data is often inaccurate or incomplete. You can analyze account profiles for deals won and lost, customer attributes, firmographics, technologies, and other relevant data points to create ideal customer profiles. You can further prioritize your ICPs with buyer intent and other actionable insights.

You can purchase intent data from review sites to identify prospects that are further along in the buying process and actively in the market for solutions. This "late stage" intent data provides visibility into who is researching your category, specific products, or competitors (and possible alternatives). Take your campaign to the next level by using company visitor information. Enhance the data to identify Buying Committee members at the interested companies.  Target these ready prospects with an automated email campaign that outlines what makes your product a better alternative to competitors’ solutions.

Sometimes you need to nudge prospects in the right direction, especially if you’ve had no prior engagement with them. Discuss with your team who should be eligible for a direct gift nudge — for example, someone who is not a previous customer and has a job title that's director level or above. Then set that criteria as an automated trigger in your marketing platform.  Once the criteria is met, the prospect will be sent a message with a gift card attached, such as $15 at Amazon, Starbucks, or Uber Eats. This act of giving shows that you value them as a potential customer and significantly increases the likelihood of receiving a response.

Your current customers make a good conduit to new ones. When one of your customers closes a deal, go and prospect their competition for it. Because they’ll have a similar profile to your customer, you know that these competitors should be a good fit for your solution. Target them with an automated email campaign that references the missed deal. Show them how your product can help them, like their competition, expand and improve their results.

A competitor's customers can be a great source of new business - if you can get plugged into the right signals. Companies that churn from your competitors are already educated on your value proposition and understand its potential. This makes them well-positioned to find a better solution - you. Use technographic data to monitor and alert you when a target company in your total addressable market (TAM) drops a competitive technology from their stack. Automatically discover ZoomInfo contacts at these companies that fit the Buying Committee for those technologies. Create a play specific to each targeted technology and pair specific outbound email messaging for each technology identified.

Knowing what tech your product plays well with can expand your market. Identify which of your technologies complement the products or tools of other companies. Then run outbound campaigns to potential customers with messaging about using your product with that complementary technology. You can automatically discover ZoomInfo contacts at these companies that fit the buying committee for those technologies. Create a play specific to each complementary technology and pair it with specific outbound messaging.

Use technology trackers to identify when your target customers buy from your competitors and find the exact right time to launch a "switch to us" campaign. Automatically reach out to them 6 to 9 months after they contract with your competitors to compete for the presumed pending renewal. Implement this play multiple times, one for each competitor, with email copy specifically mentioning the competitor with reasons to consider switching to your product.

Event managers typically receive a list of companies that will be attending an upcoming event. But they might not receive critical information for prospecting, such as attendees' names and contact information. By leveraging ZoomInfo's data, you can search company organization charts and reporting structures to identify contacts that fit the profile of an attendee. Collect the email addresses and phone numbers of potential prospects and invite them to a pre-event meeting, an opening reception, or other tailored events.

Don’t miss any opportunity to build rapport in the sales process. If a prospect’s out-of-office reply comes back from a drip campaign you’re running, set up a timely response with a welcome back message. Using automation, drop any out-of-office leads into a separate sequence before resuming your drip campaign. The new sequence schedules a short, cheery welcome back email two days after the lead is scheduled to return to the office. Reps should immediately call once the lead opens the welcome back message.

Firmographics and technographics help identify which companies are your potential customers. Intent data lets you know which companies are actively searching for a solution like yours. Intent data casts a broad net across the internet to gather top-of-funnel signals about the issues, solutions, technologies, and vendors that potential buyers research before buying. This early visibility on developing opportunities gives your sales teams a head start on the competition. You can select intent topics related to your business and monitor when a specific account, or set of accounts, conducts high-level, potential-purchase research. When relevant prospects show buying intent, you can target them with messaging tailored to their specific search, buyer persona, industry needs, etc. You may want to implement this play multiple times and pair specific messaging with each group of intent topics.

Social media channels are not only great for building brand awareness and a community of advocates for your company. They are also a great source of leads for your marketing efforts.  When you see engagement on your social media channels, either positive interaction with your brand or negative interactions with a competitor’s brand, start up a conversation with the commenters. Take note of where they work and send a relevant follow up campaign to the main point of contact and the buying committee.

Our website analytics tool can turn anonymous, high-value visits to your website into known accounts with strong first-party buyer intent signals. You can then pull together a campaign to nurture and reach out to these prospects based on your typical buyer persona and ideal customer profile. Set up an automated workflow to trigger an outreach motion to Buying Committee members at these accounts.

When a company receives a round of funding, it’s a strong signal that they are likely to begin making new investments to grow their business. It’s an event worthy of congratulations and a natural conversation starter. But it’s not easy to manually track when every company receives funding. With our Funding function, you can identify prospect companies and trigger automated workflows to send an email congratulating them on the funding round, introduce your company, and educate the prospect on how you can help turn their new funding into future growth. By automating this workflow, reps can get a jump start on outreach.

Senior-level prospects at large accounts can be difficult to reach. This play is designed to influence accessible and responsive end-users to create a groundswell of demand. Eventually interest either reaches a tipping point where the prospective buyer is overwhelmed by internal demand for your solution or you leverage the aggregated results to create a compelling case. A good way to create groundswell is by offering a free trial to individual users at the account. Free trials allow them to test your product’s capabilities and experience its potential value. Run targeted campaigns through several channels, including social and display advertising, tailored landing pages, and SDR outreach.

Don't interact with your best prospects with just any chatbot. Respond with pre-written chats geared toward your specific value offer for them. Identify your top prospects and craft a message to meet their needs. Then set up your chatbot to deliver this dialogue when anyone from a target company lands on your site. Now you can initiate more connected relationships and build on the momentum of multiple visitors from the company.

All good sales motions meet the customer where they are. When a potential customer views a product page on your website, recognize their interest and send targeted ads and messaging about the product they viewed. Initiate an automated email campaign. Follow up with a call to schedule a product demo.

The end of a fiscal year is a great time to get in front of potential customers. People are often looking to spend their remaining budget before the year closes, which opens the door for you to make a sale.  Identify accounts that are within 90 days of their fiscal year closing. Enroll them in a campaign that explains why your product or service is the right fit for them and a great way to invest their remaining money.

Responding quickly to inbound inquiries will dramatically increase your chances for success. A recent study showed conversion rates are eight times higher when salespeople place their first call within five minutes of getting a lead.  When a website visitor researches a project management solution or fills out a web form for a product demo, the assigned SDR should receive an automated alert and contact the prospect immediately. If they can’t reach the prospect, they should leave a voicemail and add the prospect to a follow-up email sequence requesting a call.

An effective way to move forward with a website visitor who fills out a form is to contact them immediately with a phone call. If the SDR cannot reach the prospect, leave a voicemail and then add them to an email nurture campaign that encourages them to sign up for a free trial. Ideally, send this email within 10 minutes of leaving the voice message. Add these contacts to a call list so SDRs can call them back.

Capturing leads who downloaded your content is a great way to seed your database with potential buyers. But what happens to those leads after they are collected? Content downloads and webinar leads often aren't "hot" enough to assign to a sales rep. But you can create automated campaigns that relate to the downloaded content to nurture these leads along the buyer journey — with the goal of converting them to marketing-qualified leads (MQL). Leads can be automatically added to nurture campaigns based on the content topic, related topics, or their job function. Automated lead nurturing campaigns can increase the rate of conversion of initial leads to high-value leads, and also shorten the time it takes for them to convert.

A prospect initiates communication — maybe they fill out a form or request a demo — but you can’t get a hold of them. Send an engaging messaging with a calendar invite to this inbound lead. New technology makes it possible to book a meeting on their calendar. This is a last-ditch effort to make a connection, and it's a little risky to schedule a meeting without a qualified call first. But getting a meeting on the calendar is worthwhile. There's a good chance the prospect will take the meeting. Even if they accept the invitation by accident and want to renegotiate, they might offer you something to get out of it.

What happens when a prospect initiates communication with a website chat feature, but you can’t connect with them? Send a calendar invite to this inbound lead with tailored messaging. New technology even makes it possible to book a meeting on their calendar. This is a last-ditch effort to make a connection, and it's a little risky to schedule a meeting without a qualified call first. But getting a meeting on their calendar is worthwhile. There's a good chance the prospect will take the meeting. Even if they accept the invitation by accident and want to renegotiate, they might offer you something to get out of the meeting.

Interacting with prospects via chatbot is a valuable opportunity to connect in real-time, answer questions, and point them in the right direction. However, the buyer has control over these conversations and can end them at any time. If a prospect abandons a conversation before providing their contact information or filling out a form, use the IP and company data filters to identify the visitor's company and enrich that data to identify the company's likely buying group. Then set up an automated email sequence to the group. By reaching out to other potential decision-makers, you can ensure that this is not a missed opportunity, but rather a starting point to engage with the right people.

Half of all website forms are left unfinished and not submitted. Maybe the prospect got distracted or they weren’t ready to talk to a rep. Following up on abandoned forms (partially filled forms) can boost your lead volume by 100% — and you can capture emails from these forms in real-time using ZoomInfo's FormComplete. Through FormComplete, these emails are enriched with the prospect's name, title, job function, level, and associated company data, including potential Buying Committee membership. Marketing teams can nurture these leads or retarget them with ads, while sales teams follow up on potential opportunities.

Multiple inbound leads from a single prospect account may indicate that they face recurring business challenges that your product can solve. An email sequence offering a free trial and targeted to high-placed decision-makers at the account can start a useful conversation. Acknowledging a heavy number of inbounds from a company and offering to support the issues that need to be fixed creates an opportunity to show the value of your product or service. Noticing inbound lead patterns and targeting higher-ups at an account takes advantage of data known about a prospect, increasing the chance of a sale.

For upcoming demos, identify the buying committee at the prospective company and target them with display ads. When they’re surfing around the web, make sure that they see your ads everywhere. This can be done by adding the company to a ZoomInfo Marketing Audience to deploy a digital advertising campaign. This will make you more present in their world and give you a share of their thought process. The ad copy shouldn't mention the meeting — but use your standard value props for this persona. It’s a subliminal thing. By the time you meet, you’re already familiar to them.

A certain percentage of prospects will always fail to show up to a pitch meeting, but you shouldn’t let these leads slip away. Set up notifications in your CRM for prospects that didn’t show up to meetings. Dedicate a team (typically new SDRs) to reach out to no-shows by phone and email immediately after meetings for the last seven days. From days eight through 20 after the no-show, other reps can try to re-engage the prospect through calls and emails. This will keep your product top-of-mind and increase the likelihood of a closed-won opportunity.

Meeting confirmation is the first step toward closing the deal. If possible, send an invite while you’re on the phone with the prospect and try to get them to accept the meeting. If you can’t get confirmation on the phone, work to have it accepted by the end of the day. If it isn’t accepted by the end of the day, email the prospect, send a text to the lead’s mobile phone number, or give the prospect a quick call. For strategic accounts, consider sending a gift or a gift card. Once accepted, send a reminder email the night before the meeting. If there's no response, call the day of the meeting to confirm the time still works. If the lead doesn’t answer, leave a voicemail and text a message saying you are looking forward to the meeting. Send an automated email reminder 10 minutes before with the Zoom link.

This is one of the biggest plays we run at ZoomInfo. You’ve scheduled a demo and want to make sure that people show up for it. Send out a qualification survey ahead of the demo meeting. You’ll see a huge increase in show rate for those who take it and know more about them before you meet. If someone spends time filling out the survey, they’re both interested in the product and invested in the process. You'll see a 90% show rate for people who fill out the entire survey.

Sometimes you make a great connection and run an engaging demo, but the prospect isn’t ready to move forward. Maybe they need more time, or more budget, or want to look at other vendors before committing.   It may be a missed opportunity, but it’s not a closed one. Run this play to keep the lead warm until they are able to complete the purchase.  To run the Completed Meeting, No Opportunity play, identify your point of contact and anyone else you met and enroll them in a nurture campaign with softer, informative calls to action. Sharing content is a great way to stay top of mind with prospects until the time is right. ]

With Podcast Mention Signals, you will be notified when a key prospect or person of interest has discussed topics relevant to your business in a podcast. Imagine that you work for cybersecurity startup. One of your target account’s CEO recently spoke about their need to strengthen cybersecurity on a podcast. With this new Signal, you can boost your outreach by referencing those concerns and offering a tailored solution that addresses their security gaps. This is going to be a timely and highly relevant way to start engaging with your prospects.

Every sales rep has been there. You work on closing a prospect for weeks, you finally discuss pricing, and at the last second, they back out. Mark them closed-lost and automate a sales flow to re-engage the opportunity after 90 days have passed. Use a B2B data intelligence platform like ZoomInfo to identify and reach out to other key decision-makers at the account — also known as Buying Committee members — in addition to your original contact. This will increase the closed-won rate of good-fit opportunities that were previously considered dead.

Say you've been working on an opportunity for months and all you need to close the deal is a signed contract from a key stakeholder. But 48 hours have passed and the contract hasn’t been signed. Maybe new priorities have popped up or your main contact is waiting on final approval from higher-ups. An automated, executive-authored email can handle the heavy lifting required to stay on top of the situation and prevent the deal from stalling. You can set the response time based on your industry, relationship with the customer, complexity of the deal, etc. This high-level messaging can be just the thing to unlock any hold ups and close the deal.

Just because an opportunity was created by a sales rep doesn’t mean it’s chugging along toward becoming a closed deal. Track deal progress to make sure things keep moving. When a stalled opportunity is identified (e.g., no movement for 30 days), have an executive on your team send an email that includes a clear call to action. You can automate this with custom messaging and a special offer.

The average opportunity has five stakeholders. If you are only working with one, you have a single point of failure. The goal of this campaign is to identify additional decision-makers that could keep an opportunity alive should your current contact lose interest, leave the company, or doesn't have the clout to get the deal done. After seven days (or an appropriate time period for your sales cycle), use ZoomInfo or another data provider to identify other decision-makers at the account. Send them a follow-up sequence from the account executive.

When researching technology, buyers often encounter tons of information about available options. But they don't always get the full picture of how one solution compares to another. When a competitor is mentioned on a sales call, set up an automated nurture program that highlights the advantages of your product over that competitor's product. This allows you to inform the buyer about your solution relative to the competitive landscape, regardless of the individual sales rep.

When an opportunity has been in limbo for a few months with no decision, revive it through outreach from your leadership team. By leveraging the credibility of your company leaders, you can get prospects to provide a "yes or no" answer on continuing to pursue your solution. Sending automated messaging from leadership can also save time by creating a sense of urgency for the buyer to respond. Even if the prospect doesn’t want to continue — or can’t be convinced — getting a definitive answer allows you to move on and focus your efforts on companies that are more likely to buy.

When a new lead comes in through a high-value web form, you should also pursue the rest of the stakeholders who influence purchasing decisions at the company. Today, many purchasing decisions are handled by committees and not individuals. This expanded campaign will inform a wider audience about your product, get buy-in at multiple levels, and accelerate the sales process. To save time and avoid a missed opportunity, trigger automated emails to Buying Committee members right after their colleague fills out the form.

How often have you spent time and resources to build up a champion at an account, only for them to make a career move and leave? Losing your strongest connection doesn’t mean you have to lose the account.  The Replace Champion Play is a great way to stay on top of accounts that might be at risk when your main point of contact leaves. It identifies up to 20 contacts at the account and drops them into a nurture campaign. This sets you up to reach out and quickly build a relationship with your next champion.

Don't be caught by surprise when it comes to renewal time. Schedule a customer check-in 90 days prior to the renewal of an existing contract to understand how their priorities may have evolved over the course of the contract. Send an automated sequence from your account manager to set up a meeting to talk about their experience with your product, including their concerns and challenges.

Customer referrals with compelling testimonials about your solution can be a significant contributor to your business pipeline.   To make it easy for your customers to give referrals, send an automated request email with a discount code or landing page link. Some referral programs provide incentives, while others rely on the goodwill of their customers. As for timing, ask your customers for a referral after their onboarding and training are complete. That said, you are more likely to get a higher quality referral if you wait until after they've had a "wow" experience with your product.

Send out a quarterly Net Promoter Score survey to identify customers at risk of churn allows you to pinpoint renewal problems before they happen. Email surveys to clients ahead of their renewal cycle to discover any potential issues. If possible, include a gift to encourage participation. Assess their responses and take appropriate corrective actions to save any at-risk accounts.

Personnel changes at a customer create great upsell opportunities. When an internal executive is promoted, they typically look to make their mark in the first 90 days, including evaluating existing technology and services - and buying new ones. Getting in front of these executives early gives you the chance to increase your odds of expanding your contract into a new department, sell more seats, etc. When the personnel tracker in ZoomInfo notifies you of an internal promotion at a customer you can automate sending a congratulatory message to capture this opportunity. Plus, a new job is a natural conversation starter, since people are already fielding plenty of congratulations from their extended networks.

There’s a downsell risk when customers aren’t using the full scope of the product they purchased. Take a look at what each customer is paying for and pinpoint features that are underutilized or not used at all. Automate outreach that highlights the benefits and value of those features and how they can derive maximum value from their subscription. Offer support to help set up unused feature(s) and familiarize them with how they work. Run this play at scale by analyzing product usage data and automating messaging campaigns. Higher product utilization translates to more upsells, renewals, and customer satisfaction.

Establishing a client takes more than signing a contract. Track user engagement at new accounts to make sure they're getting value out of your product. You can monitor the number of seats being used compared against the number of seats sold. Set up a two-step email campaign to any user that hasn't logged in. Send the first email after 15 days of inactivity, a second follow up email one a week later. Have a CSM call after 30 days if there's still no activity.

When a customer receives awards or other public recognition, it's time to celebrate! Launch a direct mail campaign or send a gift to mark the occasion. You can surface customer milestones through news or Scoops on the ZoomInfo platform.

It’s not enough to get new users set up and started with your product. You want to build an account champion by offering product support, demos, and webinars. Customer success teams should reach out to the team manager, to ensure that they understand the full range of your product and to drive better team engagement. Checking in with team managers early can improve engagement, build customer loyalty, and detect potential problems. Follow up several times in the first 30 days to get things rolling. Employ automated email campaigns based on usage data to stay apprised of new customer concerns and ensure satisfaction with a new product.

If you sell a product that has a usage revenue model - something that runs out over time - you should automate an upsell motion to resupply your client’s inventory and maintain the account. For example, at ZoomInfo, we sell credits to export companies and contacts. When those credits run low, an automated trigger prompts us to reach out and inform customers that their balance is low, and that they should purchase more credits or their service may be interrupted.

Customers rarely buy everything your company has to offer. But as they see results from their initial experience, they may research additional products on your website. Use WebSights on your site to monitor when current customers are looking into add-on products and new features. ZoomInfo Sales allows you to set up a workflow that alerts sales when a customer is on a high-value product page. Based on that routing, the account manager can reach out to the client to initiate a discussion about their latest needs and interests.

Uncover untapped opportunity at customer accounts by calculating their user saturation rate. Determine the total number of potential users at an account (by counting all the contacts that have job titles, functions, and levels consistent with your typical user base), then divide the number of their current user licenses into the number of total potential users. Focus your efforts on expanding accounts that have relatively low saturation rates, but show enough adoption to indicate that they value your product. Start by focusing on accounts with a user saturation rate between 10 and 60 percent.

First time buyers are often hesitant to take on more than they can handle. They often want to prove the value of a product with a smaller purchase, before making bigger investments. To support new buyers and create upsell opportunities, circle back to them 90 days after the purchase, to confirm the value of the relationship and to demonstrate additional products that can help them achieve their goals.

Seize the opportunity to leverage a new product feature or functionality when it launches by sending release communications to three high-level groups: • Customers who already provisioned the new feature • Existing customers who don't have the feature • New prospects Note: If you are releasing multiple features in a short period of time, it's better to roll all the updates into a single communication, such as a newsletter.

When you release a new product or feature, deploy a pop-up notice within your platform that explains its usage and benefits, and invites customers to a demo. Also announce it in your different channels, newsletter, social, etc. This will promote product usage, make the relationship stickier, and increase the likelihood of renewal. Consider product demo promotion even if a feature is no longer considered new. A good demo could highlight under-utilized features that add value or features that the customer currently sources from another vendor.

The customer life cycle and your sales calendar create great opportunities to upsell. Tailor your campaigns to incentivize customers to upgrade. Clients with good engagement generally want more functionality, but the threshold might be too high. Unlock those upsells by offering a new package that meets their needs. For example, if a customer signs up for an advanced package, highlight features that fit their use case for upgrading to the best package. Showing them additional features they'd be missing could spark more interest.

Personnel changes create great prospecting opportunities. For example, when a new executive is hired, they typically look to make their mark in the first 90 days, including evaluating existing technology and services and buying new ones. Getting in front of these new hires early gives you the chance to influence their agenda and increase your odds of winning a deal. Plus, a new job is a natural conversation starter, since people are already fielding plenty of congratulations from their extended networks. Personnel moves can also reveal strategic changes at a company. For example, knowing which companies are hiring new executives in data science or corporate finance can tell you a lot about where they’re headed in the near future.

Churned customers aren’t always gone for good. You can often win them back if you resolve their reasons for leaving, such as adding new features or improvements to a product. Record the reasons for every lost customer and segment them into high-level categories, such as pricing, budget, product features, and customer experience. Capture relevant details, including desired features that didn’t exist or a problem with your customer service. Start campaigns with messages tailored to these reasons that acknowledge prior limitations and subsequent improvements. Combine the message with a free trial offer to win back the customer.