Executive Summary

Full Disclosure

First, some context on the situation is needed. I think I’m writing this article as a pretty objective observer here. I haven’t used either RB2B or 6Sense before, but I’ve heard great things from our clients and from different marketing leaders about both software products. In full disclosure, Adam’s post came up in my LinkedIn feed because I am considering trying RB2B on our site given their freemium pricing… I can’t afford 6Sense otherwise I would consider them too. 

The bigger issue here is not whether 6Sense or RB2B is a better product, but whether we’ve reached an inflection point in the marketing industry where competition is the response to turbulence in this sector of the economy. How should these shifts impact your Go-To-Market motion within your own company? 

Background

Robinson’s post, which serves as the flashpoint for this recent controversy, highlights his experiences after buying and renewing a 6Sense software license. There are references to data he received as a customer when doing a comparison with his own product. 

RB2B's Case

If all of his assertions about the data are correct, Robinson has some strong points about the effectiveness of his product being able to measure intent at a person level over an overall account-level. We’ve seen a lot more discussion about B2B marketing maturing to address the growing size of buying committees. Matching the intent of each committee member with the firmographic data on LinkedIn would make a powerful addition to an ABM motion across the customer journey. Then combining that with RB2B’s price point really shows a high ROI potential for their product… at least while these prices are offered (which likely won’t be any longer than 1-2 years, in my opinion). 

6Sense’s Case

Adam Robinson’s assertion about the data quality in 6Sense is another point, which sets the foundation for 6Sense’s argument that he’s violating their Terms of Services. Irrespective of the validity of that claim (which isn’t good if it’s true), there is an outstanding question:

In fairness to 6Sense, Robinson does claim in a subsequent post that he would never use this software for their marketing purposes. Which seems to infer that the only reason to buy the license was for product comparison purposes. 6Sense also includes a slide that seems to indicate at first glance that there wasn’t a price increase on their renewal. 

Impact on today’s competitive landscape

I’ve been active in Software-as-a-Service – either in a Sales, a Marketing, or a Customer Service capacity – as far back as 2009. Like any market that isn’t a monopoly, we always had competitors that were out to take market share from us. However, the SaaS industry has seen competition has shifted as conditions in the broader economy have changed. 



What’s happening over the past two years is that competition is not just coming from other firms announcing “I’m competing with you!’. Today your competitors can engage with you in the form of customers, vendors, and dark social communities who have ownership interests that conflict with your business. Keep in mind that guerilla marketing has been around for many years, but the tactics have changed more recently. 

Recommendations for Marketers today

Marketing and Sales leaders, it means that you need to be cautious about the way that you do business as well. “There’s blood in the water and the sharks are circling…“

Here are a few things that can help with your firm. 

1.  Understand Your Competitors

Define how you want to identify competition and set agreements on which activities expose your firm to risks? Then share this with all of your staff so everyone is consistent. 

2.  Focus on your Key Customers

Hone in on the impact you generate with your firm’s GTM Strategy and focus that offer on your Ideal Customer Profile. 

3.  Don't fuel the fire

You don’t necessarily have to stop these activities if you can compete effectively, but don’t continue to operate in a no-win situation. Change vendors, change communities, or first that predatory client if they’re violating your Terms of Service. It can lead to painful decisions, but it’s better not to delay taking actions that will harm you in the long run

4.  Otherwise, fight fire with fire

I loathe this approach, but sometimes if you can’t beat them, then join them. It does work and many of the largest firms started by cutting through traditional tactics to deliver results. If your competition is reverse engineering your product, you could do the same thing to create your own product comparison.

Case Study: Competing in today’s markets

The Challenge

In our situation, our competitors bought out two of the dark social MOPs communities that we used to participate in for community-led-growth. They also struck partnership agreements with a key vendor to coordinate engagement data from their User Group and their Advocacy programs that we used to “Champion”. Essentially, everything that we used to do to grow pipeline was being funneled to our competitors first. 

These are serious – potentially fatal - challenges to my company if they’re not addressed. After a lot of soul searching, I reconciled that I had built the business solely on brand reputation and on word of mouth from these MOPs communities. We had always participated in Marketo User Groups with an earnest desire to help marketing leaders use their marketing automation software, which in turn led to a lot of great client-service relationships over the last 7 years.  But that's not a scalable - or even a sustainable - strategy in the long run.

The Solution

In 2023 and 2024, it means that we had to make some painful shifts. We fired 2 vendors who had FTEs that were directly competing with us and shifted to their competitors where there wasn’t a conflict of interest. We also declined to renew an engagement with a predatory client of our own.

Admittedly, I’m struggling giving up community work given how much I loved the professional development I got from community events – truly, I have made some good friends that helped with my mental health a lot while running a startup during the COVID-19 pandemic.

So rather than feed leads and engagement data to our competitors, I skipped all of the advocacy events at Adobe Summit this year. Instead, I decided to focus my time on the expo floor having conversations with potential clients and partners which have been a lot more productive. I'm also going to spend a lot more time on paid media (advertising) and owned media (our website and our blog), to balance out the earned media I've created to date.

6Sense, as the incumbent in this new competitive rivalry, I would double down on your very solid history of delivering value, build more responses around the data relevancy, and perhaps tighten rules to vet new customers. If Robinson's right about the data on your platform, then address that first.

I'm still interested in both products. There will still always be demand for these kinds of buying signals. The question remains: what happens at the end of this chapter of the story?