In today’s intensely competitive market, the coveted first-mover advantage is no longer good enough. To truly sell smarter and win faster, sales and marketing professionals need to be the first to reach their targets precisely when buyers are ready to engage.

Sure, they might be the perfect fit for your solutions. The ROI for their business may be clear and convincing. But the cold reality of today’s B2B sales landscape means that the vast majority of your ideal customers simply aren’t in-market when you’re ready to reach them.

That’s precisely the problem we set out to solve with ZoomInfo Copilot.

Closing the Opportunity Gap

Data from HubSpot reveals that 60% of the average buyer’s journey is complete by the time they first engage with vendors.

For teams relying primarily on inbound leads from traditional sources, such as website form-fills, this means prospects have been reading your articles, comparing customer reviews, and evaluating your pricing — and they already have some well-formed opinions about your solutions, your competition, and the likelihood of winning their business.

60% of the buyer's journey is complete before first contact with the vendor according to data from HubSpot.

At best, this is a serious disadvantage. At worst, it cedes virtually all control of the conversation to the buyer, putting your sales team on the defensive from the outset.

To make matters even more challenging, data from Gartner indicates that 85% of deals are won by the seller that was first to engage.

That increasingly narrow opportunity gap is where deals are won or lost.

It’s also where ZoomInfo decided to focus its considerable R&D efforts two years ago when we entered into strategic partnerships with Anthropic, Llama, and OpenAI to develop ZoomInfo Copilot.

Sell Smarter. Win Faster.

Make Every Seller Your Best Seller with ZoomInfo Copilot

Request a Demo

ZoomInfo Copilot: Finding Signals in the Noise

Despite having more data at their disposal than ever before, today’s GTM teams still struggle to connect with motivated buyers at the right moment.

Many salespeople waste much of their time pursuing prospects who aren’t ready to buy. Intent data signals are often siloed across multiple systems in the tech stack, resulting in missed opportunities. Even specialized ABM or sales engagement tools typically handle signal data through their own narrow lens.

In this fragmented world, more data simply means more noise — resulting in signals that are difficult to interpret, and outreach to buyers who simply aren’t ready.

While most GTM teams have one or two standout salespeople, too many sales professionals either lack access to the signals and insights that could make them great, or have those signals and insights but don’t know how to act upon them.

This is bad for revenue goals and worse for morale. But it also means longer sales cycles, lower win rates, and the heavy discounting salespeople often resort to in order to hit their number.

Hidden Buyers Cost Salespeople Their First-Mover Advantage

The challenge facing salespeople today isn’t necessarily better-informed buyers. It’s that those hidden buyers — the ones who are 60% of the way along their customer journey before identifying themselves — deprive salespeople of that crucial first-mover advantage.

Even the best sellers in the world can’t close deals that aren’t on their radar.

This isn’t solely a problem of timing and missed opportunity. It’s also a problem of resources. Casting as wide a net as possible in the hopes of reaching more prospects — playing the numbers game — is an enormous drain on resources for comparatively little return. It’s like fishing in the ocean compared to a fishbowl.

With just 10% of your total addressable market actually in-market at any given time, closing the opportunity gaps on both these fronts should be the ultimate goal of every individual and initiative in a GTM team. In today’s challenging economy, that means getting to those hidden buyers first — and that begins with following the trail those prospects leave behind.

Gaining an Edge with ‘First-Mover Signal’ Data

With such a narrow window of opportunity, and increasing competition for the buyers within it, it’s crucial for GTM teams to leverage the power of AI to identify signals that demonstrate prospects are ready to buy now.

That’s precisely what ZoomInfo Copilot can do for your team.

ZoomInfo Copilot identifies prospective buyers that are in-market right now and, most importantly, are at key moments in the customer journey.

We surface and identify potential buyers who are researching your products, reading your content, and visiting your website, but who have not yet identified themselves — the prospects who aren’t 60% of the way through their customer journey and have not yet engaged with another seller — and provide reps with intelligent, personalized recommendations for next steps to take.

To find and identify these high-value prospects, ZoomInfo Copilot gathers and analyzes vast amounts of B2B data, including first-party CRM data, partner signals, and intent data such as website visits, earnings data and financial disclosures, and comparative product research. Combined with the best-in-class third-party company and contact data we have long been renowned for, ZoomInfo Copilot surfaces data and insights no other provider can match.

This data is summarized and presented directly in users’ homepage feed, and delivered directly to users via daily or weekly email digests. ZoomInfo Copilot provides sellers with a list of recommended next actions to take based on the urgency of the buying signals and intent data surfaced by ZoomInfo Copilot.

Users can then create custom buying groups of individuals with purchasing authority based on first-party CRM contact data, previous engagements, and intent signals. ZoomInfo Copilot’s powerful AI recommends buying groups based on insights gleaned from our data, removing the barrier for sellers to multithread effectively, which is essential to closing deals and driving revenue in today’s challenging macroeconomic environment. Copilot also leverages this rich data to create deeply personalized outreach emails that speak directly to customer pain points, in seconds.

The result? Detailed, holistic profiles of the most valuable buyers in your market, delivered to your sales team at the precise moment buyers are ready to act, driven by sophisticated AI technologies combined with ZoomInfo’s best-in-class, first-party B2B data.

“Right out of the gate, Copilot showed me several prospects most likely to engage that correctly fit our ICP, saving me time,” says Conner Watterud, business development representative at FreightWaves.

Surfacing buyer signals with ZoomInfo Copilot

Using AI, ZoomInfo Copilot surfaces the breadcrumbs left behind by hidden buyers as they move through the buyer’s journey, as well as intent signals that demonstrate a prospect is primed and ready to buy.

Brand champions moving into new roles, new job listings being posted, earnings calls and other financial disclosures being published, key contacts conducting comparative research on sites like G2, visits to specific pages of your site — all these signals demonstrate strong intent that those hidden buyers are in-market right now.

ZoomInfo Copilot’s AI can help your teams surface those tell-tale data points and identify motivated buyers who are in-market for your solution before anyone else. Closing the opportunity gap by solving for the missed opportunity cost of losing that first-mover advantage, and using your resources more effectively, can drive remarkable results.

ZoomInfo: Your Trusted Partner in GTM AI

ZoomInfo is the world leader in B2B data. More than 35,000 companies in every industry, including more than 60% of the Fortune 1000, trust ZoomInfo’s platform and data as the foundation upon which they build their businesses and go to market.

But it’s no longer enough to merely prioritize accounts. To compete in today’s market, businesses must close the opportunity gap and reach those hidden buyers before their competitors.

ZoomInfo has a long and proven history of creating the best outcomes for our customers, because we have the best data. The foundation of any successful AI initiative is quality, reliable data, and in this regard, ZoomInfo is far and away the market leader.

We’ve helped tens of thousands of companies reach new markets and grow their business by providing the best B2B data in the world. Now, with ZoomInfo Copilot, GTM teams can act swiftly and decisively to reach those high-value hidden buyer prospects before anyone else, maximizing their impact, with fewer resources, in less time.

More than 20,000 users across 500 companies have already achieved impressive results with ZoomInfo Copilot during our extensive beta, and that enthusiasm has only grown as we’ve introduced Copilot to the broader market.

Learn more about Copilot to find out why we’re so excited about its ability to help sellers everywhere sell smarter and win faster.