How a B2B Infrastructure Company Extended Their 6sense Stack with HG Insights for Competitive Displacement and Contract-Driven Sales

The company had built its commercial GTM motion around 6sense. For standard enterprise software sales, it was effective: behavioral intent signals helped the team prioritize accounts and allocate outreach time. The platform was well-regarded internally for its user-friendly interface.

But as the company matured its go-to-market, three sales motions exposed fundamental gaps in what 6sense could deliver: competitive displacement campaigns, contract-timed outreach, and expansion into regulated and government segments. Each of these requires data that 6sense is not structurally designed to provide.

1. Intent signal gaps in key segments

6sense’s core engine relies on matching IP addresses to accounts. This works in commercial B2B, but creates coverage gaps in multiple important segments. Government agencies often route traffic through centralized VPNs and shared IP pools. Large enterprises with distributed workforces and remote-first policies produce noisy, unreliable signals.

Even for commercial accounts, the granularity gap was apparent. The team needed contract start dates, product intensity scoring, and install-level data for competitive displacement — none of which 6sense provides. For European market targeting, the team recognized that precise competitive displacement required technographic data at a depth that behavioral intent signals cannot deliver.

2. Scoring transparency gaps in complex sales motions

Competitive displacement requires scoring logic that accounts for install age, contract timing, and technology stack depth. Government sales require weighting for budget cycles and procurement windows. 6sense’s proprietary scoring model does not support these requirements.

The marketing operations team found 6sense’s scoring significantly less transparent and customizable than they needed. They required the ability to see exactly why an account was scored, adjust weightings by product category, geography, and deal size, and build multiple models aligned to different sales motions. Without that visibility, sales representatives had no way to understand why certain accounts were prioritized, which eroded trust and limited adoption.

The team also discovered that their predictive scoring model was deprioritizing government and public sector accounts — burying high-priority targets — with no mechanism to identify or correct the bias.

3. No contract intelligence or behind-the-firewall technographics

One of the most actionable signals in infrastructure displacement sales is knowing when a competitor’s contract is nearing expiration. 6sense has no visibility into contract timing, federal procurement data, or incumbent relationships. The sales team relied on CRM notes and manual estimation to track contract renewals — an unreliable process that resulted in reps spending time on accounts that had already renewed.

6sense’s technographic approach produces limited useful data for enterprise infrastructure products deployed behind corporate firewalls. The team needed behind-the-firewall technographic detection using anonymized resume and job posting data, covering products that are invisible to public-facing signal detection methods.