Understanding Your Buying Groups

What you’ll learn

This playbook offers a step-by-step approach to understanding and engaging with your buying groups through DB1S. This will equip you to answer critical account questions, including:

• Who is most engaged?
• What topics are they researching?
• Are their interests below or above the line (key decision-makers versus influencers or end-users)?
• What content resonates with them, and how can you use it to engage effectively?
• You’ll also explore insights like site analytics, buying groups, and heatmaps, giving you a clear path to build stronger connections with your target accounts.

Understanding your buying group is crucial to driving successful sales outcomes. Modern sales aren’t about one-wp-wp-wp-wp-size-fits-all tactics; they require insight into who influences decisions and how they engage with your content. This playbook equips you with the tools to identify key personas within a buying group, enabling you to target decision-makers and influencers with precision.

By leveraging data and insights shared in this guide, you’ll not only uncover which accounts and contacts matter most but also tailor your approach to match their specific interests. This alignment helps you craft messages that resonate, foster stronger connections with buyers, and accelerate deal cycles.

With a clear view of the buying group, you can empower your sales team to work collaboratively, prioritize high-value opportunities, and stay ahead in competitive markets. Use this playbook to build a data-driven strategy and elevate your ability to close deals effectively.

What you need to get started

• Access to Demandbase One for Sales
• Access to DB1S features via your sales enablement tools (e.g., SFDC widget).
• A clear understanding of your sales process and target personas
• Access to your LinkedIn connections to leverage insights from the Connections feature
• Your CRM fully loaded with target account data

Key considerations

• Think from the buyer’s perspective. What does their research say about their pain points?
• Distinguish engagement from above the line (decision-makers) and below the line (influencers and end-users)
• Look for patterns in behavior and target your messaging accordingly.
• Use data to create alignment across your team and build confidence in your strategy

Step-by-step playbook

Part 1: How to understand your potential buying group

• Identify engagement patterns. Who is visiting your site? Are they part of your target personas?
• Analyze the type of content they’re consuming. Are they more interested in “how-to” guides, case studies, or competitor comparisons?
• Examine activity timelines to identify high-value leads.
• Use insights to align messaging that resonates with each group.

Step 1: Timeline

One of the most powerful features in DB1S, Timeline, provides a detailed view of account activity.

• Review the history of engagement, tracking actions like demo requests, site visits, or competitive research.
• Identify spikes in activity to predict where interest may be building.
• Use this data to prioritize accounts that are heating up.

Step 2: Heatmaps

• Organize heat maps by persona types and engagement. Focus on who (personas/teams) and what (content/topic) to refine targeting strategies.
  

  

• Click on the row/column you want to dive into to view all persona-level engagement from SFDC campaigns (MQLs) over the past 6 months.

• Look for patterns within the activities that drove engagement:
  • People: Are the same individuals returning multiple times?
  • Personas/Teams (via Title): Is there a pattern in the teams showing interest in specific content? If so, we should target these teams.
  • Topics (via Details): Is the content they are viewing related to a particular topic? Use this information to identify individuals and craft targeted messaging.
  • Frequency and Recency of Activity (via Activity Date): Is it the right time to reach out, based on their activity?

Pro Tip: Look at the frequency and recency of activity to prioritize follow-ups.

Step 3: Highlights

Highlights focus on the most engaged contacts and their actions.

• View top-scoring contacts who are actively researching your products or services.
• Drill down into the activities that drove their engagement scores.
• Use this information to prioritize your outreach efforts.
  

  

• Connections
  Leverage your LinkedIn network within our platform to find valuable connections.
  • Identify mutual connections for warm introductions.
  • Directly access verified contact details, including email and phone number.
  • Use LinkedIn profiles to personalize your outreach.

Part 2: Buying Groups for Sales

Step 1: Building buying groups

One of the biggest challenges for sales in approaching accounts is knowing who the buying group is. Take the guesswork and manual process out of it, with Buying Groups for Sales.

• Identify and target the right personas and buyer roles within a buying group.
• Create multiple buying groups for different products or services to focus sales efforts on the most relevant buyers for each solution.

• Enable sales teams to quickly find all members of a buying group in one place and use role-based filters (e.g. decision-makers vs. influencers) to tailor messaging accordingly.

• Allow sales to update and add buying group members as they gather more account intelligence. 
• Equip sales teams with comprehensive contact information, including phone, mobile, email, LinkedIn profiles, and Contact Smart Scoring to indicate the accuracy and recency of the information.

Step 2: Site Analytics – Known Visitors

• Get full visibility into how known contacts are interacting with your site.
  

  

• Understand when they visited, what pages they explored, and how often they returned.

• Use these insights to personalize follow-ups and demonstrate relevance.

Step 3: Site Analytics – Identifying Unknown Visitors

Understand activity trends for anonymous site visitors and convert interest into opportunities.

• Observe site activity trends to determine when a target account is demonstrating interest.
• Identify frequently visited pages to understand what potential customers care about.
• View and promptly contact known contacts who are visiting the website.
• Obtain contact recommendations for anonymous site visitors.

Step 4: Finding Contacts in CRM

These reports can be built for individual accounts, target personas, or across a sales representative’s territory. They should show:

• Person-level engagement scores
• Engagement within the last 30 days (good starting point for identifying engaged individuals)
• Engagement over a longer time frame (3 months to 1 year) provides insight into people who were once interested and should be contacted; increasing engagement over time indicates they are generally a good person to target if they are still at the company
• Build an engaged personas report into a dashboard view
  • Contact engagement score
  • Account Name filter out list (optional)
  • Persona filter
  • Journey Stage Filter
  • Product with the most engagement filter
  • Account-level high-value page visits

• Separate reports by persona, making it easier for reps to connect persona to value prop
• Look at the communication history and engagement of that contact for relevance in messaging
• The report should include columns for the contact’s level of engagement, sales touches, and the number of high-value pages they have visited

The Results

Executing this playbook offers significant benefits for all members of your sales organization. By following the strategies outlined, you’ll enhance both pipeline quality and customer engagement while driving better sales outcomes. Here’s what makes this playbook indispensable:

• Sales Leaders: Improve pipeline quality and close deals faster.
• Account Managers: Deepen account relationships by understanding their needs better.
• Sales Teams: Build alignment across roles, ensuring everyone focuses on the right buyers at the right time.

Any team member that executes this playbook can expect to:

• Personalize their outreach instead of solely relying on data
• Collaborate with sales and marketing teams to target accounts
• Prioritize trends in engagement data over individual actions
• Integrate partner data with the Crossbeam/Reveal SFDC widget for deeper insights