Your team is grinding to generate leads in sales. They’re making calls, sending emails, and chasing every lead that comes through the door. Marketing is delivering more MQLs than ever, but somehow deals aren’t closing. Reps spend hours researching prospects who never respond. Your lead generation efforts look healthy at the top of the funnel, but conversion rates suck. Sound familiar?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: traditional methods to generate sales leads are broken for modern B2B sales.
You’re optimizing individual lead generation while your prospects make decisions as buying committees. You’re measuring first-click attribution while 97% of buyer research happens anonymously. You’re single-threading relationships while an average of 11+ people influence each B2B purchase.
The frustration your team feels — cold prospects, long sales cycles, deals that stall in “decision” stage — isn’t a execution problem. It’s a fundamental mismatch between how you generate leads in sales and how B2B buying actually works.
You’re not selling to an individual. You’re selling to a group.
Here’s how to get leads that actually convert, starting with what you can do quickly.
Where are you now? A quick diagnostic
Before diving into new ways to generate sales leads, take an honest look at your current lead generation reality. If most of these sound familiar, you’re ready for the shift:
Common lead generation frustrations:
- Your team gets plenty of leads but struggles to get prospects on the phone.
- Deals stall in “decision” stage because you can’t identify all the stakeholders.
- Marketing delivers MQLs that sales can’t convert, and everyone blames each other.
- You’re hitting activity metrics (calls made, emails sent) but missing revenue targets.
- Reps spend more time researching and chasing than actually selling.
- Your best prospects seem to appear out of nowhere, bypassing your lead generation funnel entirely.
The hidden costs: These aren’t just minor inefficiencies. When you focus on individual leads instead of accounts, you’re missing opportunities that could transform your pipeline.
That “cold” prospect who never responds? Their company might have multiple stakeholders already researching your solution.
That stalled deal? There are probably committee members you’ve never engaged.
That competitor win? They likely influenced the buying process before you even knew the account was shopping for solutions.
The good news: You don’t need to overhaul your entire approach to generate leads in sales overnight. The tactics below build on what you’re already doing, just with an account-focused lens.
How to get leads by shifting from individual contacts to account activity
The traditional approach: Generate sales leads through individual targeting
Most teams focus on generating more individual leads: more website visitors, more form fills, more demo requests. Marketing celebrates MQL numbers. Sales development reps work through lists of individual contacts. CRM dashboards track lead sources and conversion rates.
This approach to generate leads in sales makes sense in simpler transactions. But it’s breaking down because modern B2B buying doesn’t work this way anymore.
Reality #1: B2B decisions are committee decisions
Modern B2B decisions aren’t made by individuals — they’re committee decisions. Buying committees average 11 members per deal, researching across hundreds of touchpoints throughout long sales cycles. That single lead who filled out your form? They’re just one voice in a complex evaluation process.
Reality #2: Buyer journeys are complex
First-click attribution misses the vast majority of the actual buying journey, which lasts a global average of 11 months. Buying committees do a ton of research on your site and many others before they are ready to talk to a sales rep. Typically, first contact happens around the 8-month mark. If you are optimizing based on one or two touchpoints, you’ll be optimizing toward a distorted view of what’s influencing buyers.
Reality #3: Buyers hate filling out forms
Only about 3% of website visitors will fill out a form. Most B2B buyer research is done anonymously. By the time someone finally fills out a form, they’re often deep into their evaluation process and already comparing you to competitors who may have influenced their research earlier. This dark funnel activity represents the majority of buyer behavior, yet most lead generation strategies completely ignore it.
Why account-level intelligence works better
When you shift focus from individual leads to account activity, everything changes. You start seeing patterns: Multiple stakeholders engaging at different times across different channels. Account activity patterns reveal buying intent far better than individual form fills. The goal becomes buying group engagement, not individual lead scores.
This isn’t just theory. Blue Yonder’s sales team made this shift and now “focuses less on the actions of individual MQLs, and more on the overall level of activity within an account,” according to Meg Paintal, Global Vice President for Business Development. Their approach includes “strategic outreach to engage multiple buying personas within accounts that are showing interest, since engaging more of the buying team increases the odds of closing a deal.”
Implementation: the account activity audit
This week: Pull your last 20 closed-won deals and analyze them by account, not individual leads. Look for patterns: How many stakeholders engaged? Which departments were involved? Over what timeframe?
Tools needed: CRM account-level reporting plus web analytics for anonymous traffic analysis.
What you’ll discover: Accounts with buying committee engagement convert significantly better than single-contact opportunities.
Generate sales leads through qualified account identification
The problem: All accounts are not created equal
Most teams treat all prospects equally instead of focusing on accounts showing actual buying signals. They have no systematic way to identify which slice of your Total Addressable Market is actually in-market. Sales and marketing work different account lists, and reps waste time on cold prospects while hot opportunities to generate leads in sales slip away.
Why 6sense Qualified Accounts (6QAs) work
The concept is simple but powerful: combine Ideal Customer Profile fit with real-time intent signals and engagement activity. Predictive AI identifies accounts showing multiple buying signals, creating a shared view between sales and marketing on account priorities.
The results speak for themselves. In November, we identified the top 10% of 6sense customers who had the highest 6QAs Worked rates and then compared their opportunity performance against the 6sense customer average. The results are striking:
- 40% faster engagement on newly qualified 6QAs compared to the average
- 2.5x higher 6QA to Opportunity Rate than the average
- 8x more 6QA opportunities created per quarter than the average
An Intro to 6sense Qualified Accounts
Implementation: build your 6QA framework
Step 1: Define your Ideal Customer Profile using both firmographics (company size, industry, tech stack) and behavioral signals (recent funding, hiring patterns, technology adoption).
Step 2: Layer in intent signals. Which accounts are researching your category? Who’s engaging with your content?
Step 3: Create a scoring system that combines fit + intent + engagement. Not all signals are equal. 6sense’s predictive scoring uses machine learning to analyze historical deal patterns in your CRM and spot current prospects exhibiting similar behavior.
Step 4: Build shared dashboards so sales and marketing work from the same account intelligence.
Tools needed: Start with your CRM and manual account scoring. Advanced teams can leverage platforms like 6sense that process over 1 trillion signals daily to surface in-market accounts automatically.
Success metric: Focus 70% of your outreach efforts on the top 30% of qualified accounts.
Sandler made this transition and saw remarkable results. Emily Davidson, Director of Enterprise Marketing, explains: “We were previously going after individuals. However, we now know from market research, that these larger companies are no longer making single-person decisions. It’s a group decision by a buying team.” This shift contributed to a 30% increase in marketing-influenced pipeline in just six months and a 60% increase in accounts reaching marketing-qualified account status within the first month.
How to get leads through buying committee engagement
The problem: Single-threading kills deals
Deals often stall because you’re not connected to key decision makers. If you’re not addressing their concerns and helping them understand value in terms they understand, then it’s easy for them to shut down the buying process. The biggest threat to most B2B deals isn’t your competitors — it’s inaction.
Why buying committee mapping accelerates deals
When you engage multiple stakeholders, deals move faster and close at higher rates. Different personas have different pain points and buying criteria. Complete buying group coverage reduces competitive risk and creates multiple paths to “yes.”
Implementation: The committee intelligence system
Step 1: Analyze your current deals to identify typical buying committee structure by vertical and deal size. IT, Finance, Operations, and end users all have different concerns.
Step 2: Build stakeholder mapping templates. Who typically influences these decisions? What are their individual success metrics?
Step 3: Implement tools to reveal anonymous account research activity. Who’s visiting your website? What content are they consuming?
Step 4: Train reps on multi-contact engagement strategies. Different stakeholders need different messaging.
Tools needed: LinkedIn Sales Navigator for basic committee mapping, or advanced platforms that automatically identify buying committee members based on engagement patterns.
Success metric: Engage 5+ stakeholders per target account.
Zendesk achieved an 8-10% increase in opportunities by focusing on buying teams that “can include 10 or more people” in enterprise accounts. Brian Cabreros, Director Marketing Operations, noted: “Figuring out who the buying teams are was very helpful — using 6sense to look at the keywords and engaged personas. This whole-account perspective is essential as Zendesk moves upmarket.”
AI Prospecting to Speed Up Multithreading
Generate early account awareness
The problem: Anonymous buyers research without you
Here’s a sobering reality check: 81% of B2B buyers prefer to self-serve during research, and 70% prefer no interaction with sales reps at all. Buying committees research for months before revealing themselves, and competitors are influencing your target accounts while you wait for inbound interest.
Why early-stage engagement builds pipeline
The goal isn’t to interrupt their research — it’s to become part of it. The moment a target account starts researching solutions, you need to establish thought leadership before competitors get in front of prospects. Shape buying criteria and evaluation frameworks in your favor. Create “top-of-mind” awareness when buying committees enter active evaluation.
Implementation: Multi-channel awareness strategy
Stage-appropriate content distribution: Map content to buying stages, not just personas. Awareness stage buyers tends to seek industry insights and trend analysis. Consideration stage buyers look for best practices and comparison frameworks. Decision stage needs implementation guides and customer success stories.
RepTrak learned this lesson the hard way. Their initial content strategy was what they called “Buzzfeed for B2B”—it “garnered clicks, but didn’t provide the value customers needed at the right stage.” After implementing stage-appropriate content strategy, they reduced sales cycles from 112 to 90 days.
Account-based advertising at scale: Build dynamic audiences using firmographics, intent signals, and buying stage indicators. Deploy targeted ads across LinkedIn, Google, and programmatic channels. Coordinate messaging across multiple stakeholders within target accounts.
Buying committee engagement tactics: Create different content tracks for different roles. IT cares about security and integration, Finance cares about ROI and total cost of ownership, Operations cares about implementation and change management.
Engage accounts throughout the dark funnel
The problem: You’re missing most of the buying journey
Most potential buyers will never fill out a form on your site — if they even visit your site at all. Nobody enjoys having their phone and email lit up like a fireworks show, so buyers are extremely reluctant to reveal themselves until they are ready to talk, generally after they’ve already done substantial research. But that doesn’t mean you can’t influence them.
Why dark funnel intelligence changes everything
When you can see which accounts are actively researching your category, understand specific topics and pain points driving their evaluation, and identify accounts comparing you to competitors, you can engage buyers based on their actual research behavior rather than demographics. You can warm leads up with thoughtful marketing that helps them confidently make the right decision for their company.
Implementation: dark funnel visibility
Step 1: Implement web de-anonymization to identify which companies are visiting your website, even when they don’t fill out forms.
Step 2: Layer in third-party intent data showing research activity across the broader web.
Step 3: Create buying stage-appropriate messaging for different research phases.
Step 4: Automate engagement based on research signals.
A leading Healthcare Provider Network used this approach to generate $66 million in net-new pipeline by using account intelligence to “hone in on in-market accounts, target their marketing efforts, and build scalable processes.”
Coordinate sales and marketing around accounts
The problem: Teams work different account lists
Sales and marketing operate with different definitions of “qualified.” Marketing warms up accounts that sales ignores. There’s no shared view of which accounts are actually ready for sales engagement. Handoff chaos kills conversion from marketing-influenced accounts.
Why unified account intelligence drives results
When both teams work from the same prioritized account list, powered by shared signals, it eliminates finger-pointing and improves handoffs. Coordinated account-based plays across sales and marketing touchpoints create consistent experiences. Real-time visibility into account engagement across all channels keeps everyone aligned.
Implementation: The unified account operating model
Step 1: Establish shared 6QA definitions and scoring criteria. What constitutes a qualified account? What triggers handoff to sales?
Step 2: Implement account-based SLAs and handoff processes. Marketing continues to nurture accounts even after sales engagement begins.
Step 2: Talk! Have regular meetings to discuss pipeline revenue, track account statuses, and observe patterns in the activities driving accounts through the pipeline.
Tools needed: Unified revenue intelligence platform with shared dashboards that both teams can access.
Team involvement: RevOps aligns definitions, sales and marketing leadership defines processes.
The results are significant: Teams using this approach typically see improvements in marketing-sourced opportunity conversion.
Automate account engagement at scale
The problem: Manual account research doesn’t scale
Researching 11-person buying committees manually takes hours per account. It’s impossible to track engagement across multiple stakeholders and touchpoints at scale. Teams default to generic outreach because they lack buying committee context, and opportunities slip away while reps manually gather account intelligence.
Why AI-powered account intelligence accelerates pipeline
Automated research delivers complete buying committee profiles in minutes, not hours. AI agents handle routine account scoring and prioritization. Personalized messaging at scale based on account research activity becomes possible. Real-time alerts notify reps when buying committee engagement increases.
Implementation: The account intelligence stack
Step 1: Automate account research and buying committee identification.
Step 2: Implement AI-powered messaging based on account activity.
Step 3: Deploy automated account scoring and prioritization.
Success metric: Reduce manual research time by 50-70% while improving conversation quality.
Reltio achieved remarkable efficiency gains, saving 1,098 hours of BDR time — equivalent to 7 months of full-time work — through AI automation of routine prospecting tasks.
Measure account engagement, not lead volume
The problem: Lead metrics hide account reality
Teams celebrate MQL volume while account engagement stagnates. There’s no visibility into buying committee progression through sales stages. Attribution models miss the multi-touch reality of B2B buying. You can’t identify which accounts are advancing versus stalling.
Why account-based metrics drive better results
Track account progression through buying stages, not just individual lead conversion. Measure buying committee engagement depth and breadth. Understand account velocity and deal momentum. Focus on qualified account generation rather than lead volume.
Implementation: Account-centric measurement
Key metrics to track:
- 6QA generation rate
- Account progression velocity
- Buying committee engagement depth
- Pipeline created from qualified accounts
Tools needed: Account-based analytics and buying stage tracking capabilities.
Success benchmark: Focus on accounts that demonstrate higher conversion potential through comprehensive engagement patterns.
Conclusion: How modern teams generate leads in sales
Modern B2B buying is fundamentally different from the lead-centric models of the past.
The path forward is clear: shift from individual lead generation to qualified account identification and buying committee engagement. Start with the account activity audit — everything else builds from there. Focus on accounts showing multiple buying signals and real engagement across stakeholders.
The companies making this transition are seeing transformative results. You can find a collection of 6sense customer case studies here.
The future belongs to teams that understand account intelligence, not just individual lead generation.
Frequently asked questions
Why isn’t traditional lead generation in sales working anymore?
Traditional lead generation focuses on individual contacts, but modern B2B buying involves committees of 11+ people who research for months before engaging sales. When you’re optimizing for individual leads while prospects make group decisions, you’re missing most of the actual buying process. That’s why teams hit activity metrics but miss revenue targets.
How do I know if our current approach to generate leads in sales needs to change?
Look for these warning signs: your team gets plenty of leads but struggles to book meetings, deals consistently stall in “decision” stage, marketing delivers MQLs that sales can’t convert, reps spend more time researching than selling, and your best opportunities seem to come from nowhere. If most of these sound familiar, you’re ready for an account-based approach.
Where should we start when shifting our lead generation strategy?
Begin with an account activity audit. Pull your last 20 closed-won deals and analyze them by account rather than individual leads. Look for patterns: How many stakeholders were involved? Which departments engaged? Over what timeframe? This reveals the buying committee reality behind your successful deals.
What are 6sense Qualified Accounts (6QAs) and how do they improve lead generation?
6QAs combine your Ideal Customer Profile with real-time intent signals and engagement activity. Instead of treating all prospects equally, this approach identifies accounts showing multiple buying signals. Companies focusing on 6QAs see 40% faster engagement, 2.5x higher opportunity conversion rates, and 8x more opportunities per quarter than average.
Won’t focusing on accounts instead of leads reduce our total lead volume?
Yes, you’ll generate fewer total leads, but conversion quality improves dramatically. Teams using account-based approaches typically see higher win rates, faster sales cycles, and larger deal sizes. It’s better to work 100 qualified accounts showing real buying intent than 1,000 individual leads with no committee context.
What kind of results can we expect from switching to account-based lead generation?
Companies making this shift typically see significant improvements. Blue Yonder increased deal engagement by focusing on account activity over individual MQLs. Zendesk achieved an 8-10% increase in opportunities by engaging entire buying teams. Sandler saw a 30% increase in marketing-influenced pipeline and 60% more accounts reaching qualified status.