GTM Roundtable: Corrina Owens on Pairing Buyer Signals + Interactive Demos

At our user meetup in November 2024, we asked our advisors to share some of their strategies for tackling challenging marketing projects with limited time and resources.

Corrina Owens, a fractional ABM consultant and advisor to Navattic with 14 years of experience in B2B SaaS, shared her take on the “data that matters” — what buyer signals to pay attention to and how to deliver interactive demos to the right people at the right time for maximum chance of conversion.

Keep reading to learn how Corinna identifies and converts high-value prospects, with 3 real-world examples from her customers as inspiration.

It’s always been hard to get and sustain a prospect’s attention, and it’s not getting any easier.

It takes four times as many touchpoints to convert an account to a meeting compared to five years ago.

And sales representatives are stuck spending 63% of their time on activities that don’t directly generate revenue.

As marketers, that means we have to be on the lookout for high-intent leads and provide them with the information they need to make a decision quickly. The key is to understand what actually signals a high intent lead - not all signals are created equal.

What signals matter?

When you’re building out your ICP for the first time (or reassessing it), you’re trying to determine what characteristics make an account a prime target for your business. In a typical exercise, you might consider factors like:

• Industry
• Company size
• Revenue
• Average deal size

But most people forget that product tour behavior is one of the strongest indicators that an account is in-market and ready to make a purchase.

While there may be hundreds of signals, in my experience, it’s often one or two signals that can impact whether an account might close. And that signal could be engagement with your interactive demos.

You can divide buying signals into many categories, but for the sake of where most organizations start, we'll be focusing on two, first-party and third-party.

First-party is data that you own, think product data or website data.

Third-party, on the other hand, is what I call “data that you rent.” Think G2 Reviews, technographic data from a vendor that you buy. To give you a sense of how these might apply in real life, I’m sharing a few examples from companies where I implemented a signal-based strategy.

Example 1: Gong

First-party signal: Past champions

I was brought into Gong to help them go upmarket. Historically, they’d performed really well in SMB, but they wanted to use ABM to reach target enterprise accounts.

What we quickly found was that Gong’s language wasn’t resonating with their target audience.

They had nailed SMB language, but struggled to turn that messaging into one that resonated with the C-suite at an enterprise company.

So I wanted to look at our first-party intent data.

What existed in our CRM? Were there similar characteristics of closed-won SMB accounts that I could map to the enterprise?

What we found was that champions — raving fans and advocates, maybe stakeholders that signed the deal at an SMB — were leaving at a very high rate to go to enterprise companies.

So, we began tracking these former champions as a critical buying signal. And we leveraged outbound to reach those buyers with an email along the lines of: “Hey, congrats on your new gig, here’s some helpful content,” and sent over a 90-day checklist for a new sales leader.

Helpful tip

I recommend working with your sales, RevOps, or Marketing Ops team to figure out if you have champions leaving, because that’s a huge churn risk.

If you do, consider designing interactive demos that remind folks who have left about how valuable your product could be in their new role, and send them in outbound campaigns.

This is often low-hanging fruit at organizations, but one that is critical to operationalize, as 68% of executives invest in new technology in the first 90 days of their tenure. Hitting them when they first land that role can give you a significant edge.

Want to read more about this approach? Check out these Usergems and Cognism playbooks.

Example 2: Government contracting software

Third-party signal: Technographic

Another client of mine, a government contracting software company, realized that the highest quality signal of a great potential account was that they had just implemented a CRM, like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics.

So, we developed an interactive demo targeting their specific use case, letting them know that:

1. We're aware they're likely going through a new CRM implementation process

2. We can help companies just like theirs navigate the unique complexities of managing government contracts in the CRM of their choice.

The data we could summarize from their experience navigating these interactive demo tours helped sellers craft new POVs and emphasize the value props that were most relevant to the prospects they were trying to reach.

Example 3: A financial services company

First-party signal: Trial conversions

One of my financial services clients faced a unique problem with buying signals—they were acquiring companies left and right. That meant their marketers didn’t have access to the acquired CRMs or WordPress instances for a while, and they struggled to improve the buying experience.

And that buying experience was critical: the number one driver for quality pipeline for many PLG companies like theirs is free trials.

However, the free trial experience is very disjointed and unintuitive. You have to fill out an 8-step form, and then complete 5 more steps to access the trial, including looking for an activation email, installing the app, and setting up your account.

So we used interactive demos to explain and expedite the setup process, pushing more prospects to get an immediate taste of the product in the free trial.

Within the first week of launching these demos, we saw a significant increase in trial conversion rates.

Before you go and buy third-party data, the first thing I’d suggest is asking yourself: What is the number one signal that indicates an account is in-market for your solution?

If you don’t know the answer, it’s a good idea to start conversations with your RevOps and sales leadership teams.

Once you have the answer, the next step is to think about how the buying experience for these target accounts might improve with the use of interactive demos.

A few more takeaways

• Focus on enablement. Help your internal teams understand and act on these signals. Continuously communicate the value. It took probably two quarters for the teams at Gong to “get it.”
• Simplify and socialize your data. Don't overwhelm your team. Focus on one or two key signals that everyone understands and acts on. They should be speaking the same language.
• Create clear processes. For example, set up a Slack channel that alerts the entire account team (AEs, BDRs, CSMs) when a high-impact buying signal is identified so they can reach out (with a customized email!) right away.

Remember, the best marketers act as stewards of account data. Be the single source of truth that your team can rely on to make sense of the data and drive results.

Looking for more Navattic use cases?

Check out the Features and Integrations section of our blog for inspiration.