More data = more noise, right? More items to comb through, more “analysis paralysis,” and more time wasted.
It’s a comment that we hear all the time. “But actually that ‘noise’ is a very powerful tool in order to target the right accounts by knowing the technology stack of your target accounts.
A leading research company in the B2B space increased their win rate by more than 300% by outsourcing their campaign to email marketing vendors, when they had information on key parts of their prospect’s technology stack. And it’s especially helpful when your target accounts use a solution from one of your competitors.
If any of your solutions integrate with your prospect’s tech stack, it’s not a matter of whether they can use a product or service like yours; of-course they can, and they do.
You’ve probably invested a lot of money and a significant amount of time in researching, developing and testing your offerings, especially if you’re a growing B2B technology company. You’re very well versed in what your product or service can do and can easily articulate exactly how it fixes common pain points eloquently. Additionally, you are also well versed about which competitors your product or service competes well against and have content and messaging that accurately highlights your differentiation. But, how do you actually get in front of all the accounts that are currently using one of your competitor’s solutions so that you can win them over with your solution?
The answer to this question becomes very easy when you have the tech insights for current and new accounts. Technographics offers you the insights that you need to know exactly what technologies are installed at your target accounts so you can easily identify prospects using competitive products or services and then actively coordinate competitor displacement campaigns throughout the year using email marketing services or any other channel.
You can easily get this technology installation information for your current accounts, and you can also use the intelligence to find more new accounts that are also using your competitor’s products or service. Actually, marketing and sales teams who started using tech intelligence, usually find that their total addressable market (TAM) for any given competitor is often 3-5x bigger than they had estimated earlier, offering them with an even bigger revenue opportunity to pursue.
So, while the tech-stack data may be more noise, it should be music to your ears. Here’s why.
There are many companies out there that lack the opportunity to sell into an account at all unless a specific technology is present in their tech-stack. For example, a company wouldn’t want to target an organization using Oracle solution if they are in SAP consulting.
Continue to read to learn how tech data can be used to:
- Target compatible fit accounts, and seriously boost the win rate.
- Displace competitors, and seriously boost win rate.
- Find accounts with a level of maturity that better fits your product or service, and seriously boost win rate.
What is the Tech Stack?
The combination of multiple technologies an organization uses is the tech stack.
In B2B marketing and sales, an organization’s installed technologies; their marketing or sales technology stack includes;
- Software products
- Hardware
- Web servers
- Applications
- Email marketing services
- Sales enablement software
- Programming languages
- Databases
- Integrations
- Cloud-based products
- Marketing automation tools, and more
The technologies in each organization’s unique stack are usually selected based on their integration and compatibility capabilities.
How big is the Average Tech Stack?
How many technologies you think your organization uses, just multiply that by ten. Most companies seriously underestimate this number, which is just getting bigger and bigger.
The popular annual MarTech Landscape of Chief MarTech included 6,829 different technologies in 2018, from marketing alone. It had 27% more unique technologies compared to the year 2017.
There’s a lot of potential for disruption, and a lot of money here.
How Effective is targeting the Tech Stack?
A leading B2B email marketing agency recently dedicated a subset of their AE team, deemed their “raccoons”, to go through their accounts that were originally dismissed as “bad fits”, or calls that just didn’t convert. It’s quite an effective way to bubble up accounts using specific technologies that work especially well with their offerings, and redouble their efforts towards those accounts, instead of trying to evenly cover all of the ground.
They may not have taken the prospect’s technology into consideration, even though the Account Executive already dismissed the company interested in email marketing services. This information uncovers opportunities that may otherwise have been simply dismissed. That’s where the raccoons come in!
That email marketing agency team has closed more than one million dollars in supposed “bad fits”.
But what about the accounts that are a good fit?
If a target account is using X marketing automation, Y CRM, and an SDR tool like Tellwise or Outreach…if they have all that, and they are in the right industry; they are 3x more likely to convert.
Competitive Takeaway Opportunities:
When technographic insights are available in your MAP or CRM and that information is actionable and easily accessible as well, you can then jump on the opportunities more quickly leveraging email marketing services, like;
- Negative Reviews: bad news about any of your competitor solutions offers you a unique opportunity to showcase how your technology can help.
- End of Life: news announcements regarding certain hardware or software no longer be supported or being discontinued allow you to enter the conversation with affected accounts as a potential replacement solution.
- Direct Displacement: when your competitors have popular pain points, you can reach out to their customers with marketing and sales outreach campaigns that directly address their problems, illustrating exactly how your solution fixes them.
- Acquisitions and Mergers: offers an opportunity to engage with an account when they may be actively re-evaluating current technology purchases and are searching for better alternatives.
How to Use the Tech Data to Target Competitors:
Quite a lot of effort goes into choosing which accounts to peruse. It’s a given if the chosen accounts are using your competitor. You know they’re a good fit since they’re using your competitor.
Step 1: Meet your New Target Accounts: Those who selected your competitor
Choose your top 5 competitors, and then find the companies who use their solution.
Begin your search by looking at your competitors’ website: Companies usually prominently showcase the logos of their top clients.
Alternatively, reach out to Infotanks Media to get the customer database of your competitors. We offer High-Value Technographics Data (link: https://www.infotanksmedia.com/technographics/) that gives you an edge over your competition.
Step 2: Run Targeted Displacement Campaigns for Closed-Lost Accounts
Work with your marketing team to develop the following program;
- Differentiate your solution from your competition
- Get an email marketing agency, or your own email marketing services team to launch a targeted email drip campaign to keep your company top of mind
- Challenge the effectiveness of the current competitor
- Invite influencers and decision-makers to an event
In our case, being a data & email marketing agency, perusing accounts that we know are using our competitor means they’re much more likely to appreciate the value of quality data, like ours. It’s one of the most effective ways to segment.
As an email marketing vendor, when we’re searching for accounts to peruse for our email marketing services, we look at closed-lost accounts with a timestamp of nine months ago. Our SDRs then call these accounts and just ask, “How’s that working out for you?”
These are the opportunities for email marketing services that we lost as one of the leading email marketing vendors in the past to one of our competitors, and they are accurately time-stamped to be used in scenarios like this. Our SDRs will begin to work on these accounts; none months after we lost the deal, by questioning, “How is ABC working for you?”- discussing about the other compatible technologies they currently use and exactly how we integrate, and then move the conversation towards building ground swell with the stakeholders.
This approach is so effective that we’re working on an approach to automate the distribution, so any closed-lost account after nine months just pops up in our SDR’s list.
Step 3: Engage with Customer Voice
But, remember not to mention the tech stack.
By acting like a stalker you may creep out your prospects. Instead, say something like we like to work in the tech-stack, and our competitor’s weaknesses, in the customer’s voice.
The customer’s voice is formulating what you’re saying is not coming from you, but rather as a customer. This helps prospects not to feel challenged with what you’re saying, and as a result, they are much more likely to respond in a positive way.
Here’s an example of a conversation without using the customer’s voice:
Prospect: “I don’t know, we don’t want another one. We already have solutions that do the same.
Sales Rep: “Sure, but we can easily consolidate all those solutions with just one. Overall, our solution won’t just save you money, it will also help your sales and marketing teams to crush their goals more effectively because you’ll be accomplishing much more with only one solution than you are now with multiple.
Here’s an example of a conversation with the customer’s voice:
Prospect: “I don’t know, we don’t want another one. We already have solutions that do the same.
Sales Rep: “I get it. What many of our customers have found is that when they consolidated their solution, initially they saved some money on solution spend. Additionally, they were actually able to accomplish much more with the data than they did earlier, even with those layers of solutions- and the best part is that their marketing and sales teams were crushing their goals within just a month using our email marketing services that complimented their efforts.
Now, let’s take this a step farther.
If your competitor, the incumbent email marketing vendor, lacks a feature that you have you can ask your prospect how they’re going about gaining the value your service delivers. As you already know they just don’t have it.
We do this by simply asking, “How are you arming your sales team with direct dials on true decision makers on fit accounts for them to call all day?”Since none of our can truly achieve that in the first place.
For example, if your company sells an engagement platform and your strength is really intuitive analytics. Then, you could just ask:
Many of our customers come to us because they love our intuitive analytics. Are you guys able to quickly glean information easily from your analytics tool?
The best part is that you don’t even have to mention the technology itself. During a sales interaction, you want to be a thought leader. And you’re cementing that authority if you’re magically hitting all the pain points. Additionally, you know they already can use a solution like yours as they already are using a solution like yours.
How to Use the Tech Stack to Target Compatible Good-Fit Accounts:
Maybe you don’t want to replace competitors. Maybe you only want to acquire some new accounts without wasting any of your time.
Here’s another way to effectively target your prospects using tech data.
Include Installed Technologies in your Buyer Persona:
- Reverse-engineer your top 10 accounts: Choose those who renew every year, who have the largest deal size, and who get the most value from your solution.
- Next, identify the installed technologies on those accounts.
- Look for technologies that are common to most or all of these best customers.
- Identify technologies that you are compatible with or integrate with your offering.
Prioritize the top 2-3 technologies if the resulting list is too long.
Include those technologies in your CIP and account scoring model, and then go target accounts with those installed technologies.
Conclusion:
Knowing the tech stack of your prospects is one of the most valuable pieces of sales and marketing intelligence. Actually, the tech stack is the critical heart of competitive intelligence, not just part of it.
This information is the key in order to accurately target the right prospects with relevant talking points. The other valuable piece of competitive intelligence is timing.
It’s not very tough to get started with this sophisticated sales prospecting technique. Much of the information isn’t hard to find. And with a little strategy, the returns are a 300% increase in conversion rate.
Reaching out to a prospect with relevant, helpful information using channels like email marketing services at the exact moment they want is how business is won.
