How Apollo GraphQL tapped into unseen signals to drive 26% of qualified leads

Background

Modern companies have no shortage of customer data—product usage, website engagements, repo activity, social interactions, community conversations.

But go-to-market leaders like Aisha Nins, GTM Program Manager at Apollo GraphQL, know that customer data isn’t useful if GTM teams can’t use it to uncover buying signals, understand where prospects are in the buying journey, or identify ideal customers.

Here’s how Apollo GraphQL used Common Room to:

• Uncover more high-quality sales opportunities
• Give sales reps a 360-degree view of buyers
• Run repeatable plays to predictably book meetings

Automate prospect research at scale

Apollo GraphQL surfaces activity data from the channels its ideal customers frequent, including GitHub, X (Twitter), and Stack Overflow, and combines it with website engagement data, product usage data, and CRM data—all within Common Room.

This gives account development representatives and account executives one place to go to detect purchase intent, resolve buyer identities, and qualify opportunities.

“Common Room gave us visibility into multiple signals to identify new, relevant stakeholders—as well as their activity across several platforms—to target new leads and gain insights into accounts sales reps couldn’t see before,” Aisha said. “We made Common Room the hub for all the signals that would point to an ideal customer profile.”

Bringing previously siloed and hard-to-see data together also helps Apollo GraphQL make sure its qualification criteria reflect real-world results.

“What we found, which was kind of a revelation, is that the majority of the net new meetings that we booked were cold,” Aisha said. “We use a tool that tracks who's on our website—who's downloading our content, who's requesting meetings. I used to only assign accounts that were hot based off of that activity. But what we realized was that the meetings that have been booked in the current quarter—and especially those that have converted to opportunities—are cold. It was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’ve been thinking about this wrong.’ It was an eye-opener for me.”

Common Room’s Person360™ automatically creates a unified profile for every person and organization so reps can quickly view names, job titles, work histories, contact information, cross-channel activities, firmographic details, and hundreds of other digital breadcrumbs.

“Common Room helps our AEs and ADRs take a more targeted approach,” Aisha said. “They also have visibility into companies that were previously not on their radar.”

Playbook

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Segment buyers and build repeatable plays

Apollo GraphQL operationalizes customer insights via segments that are assigned to different AEs and ADRs.

“Each team has a different view in Common Room,” Aisha said. “For AEs, it’s segments for accounts they own. For ADRs, its segments for leads in their regions.”

Since Common Room has a bidirectional integration with Salesforce—Apollo GraphQL’s CRM—customer data is always up to date in both systems. Reps can easily hone in on signals from accounts in their book of business.

“Common Room allows us to import all of the data from Salesforce—accounts, prospects, ICP data, and more—so that whenever reps log in, their view is tailored to their account base and their territory,” Aisha said.

Each segment includes information critical to the sales org, such as whether an individual has signed up for an enterprise trial, downloaded relevant open-source software, or taken advantage of Apollo GraphQL’s official learning center, Odyssey.

Easy-to-use filters and tags help Apollo GraphQL customize segments to test and iterate on different sales plays, such as targeting repeat website visitors who match the company’s ICP or reaching out to economic buyers who recently changed jobs.

"We can power so many different plays using Common Room, like job-change tracking," Aisha said. "We can see when economic buyers and power users from closed-won opportunities switch jobs and automatically add them to a segment so reps can reach out at the right time. Or we can combine job-change signals from non-customers with other signals—like website interactions, social engagement, and open-source activity—so reps can craft a personalized message with full context and break through the noise."

Meanwhile, automated alerts ensure reps are instantly notified of new additions to—and activity within—their segments.

“I love Common Room because it gives us visibility into so many different signals at one time to identify trends,” Aisha said. “We can see what the companies we booked meetings with have in common and we can find other companies that share those same characteristics.”

Playbook

Quickly surface product-qualified leads (PQL)

Turn product users into product buyers.

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Run every workflow from one place

Apollo GraphQL’s ADRs and AEs can add prospects to personalized Outreach sequences, send them emails or Slack DMs, visit their LinkedIn profiles, sync their records with Salesforce, and more—all without leaving Common Room.

This eliminates the need to jump from tab to tab during the prospecting process.

“Every customer’s journey is different,” Aisha said. “No sale is exactly the same, but with all these signals embedded in Common Room, we can identify trends across the board to understand what an ideal customer looks like and where there are opportunities to engage.”

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Results

Apollo GraphQL saw the impact of Common Room right away.

“Common Room made the operationalization process easy and within a few days we were off to the races,” Aisha said. “Our sales team has realized real results with meetings booked.”

In the most recent quarter, Common Room was responsible for helping the sales org generate 26% of qualified leads and drive hundreds of thousands of dollars in new pipeline.

But some of the biggest wins for the sales org have come in the form of signals from hard-to-crack accounts that reps wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

“We've scored some great meetings with companies that are very, very hard to sell into,” Aisha said. “These are huge wins for us. There was one in particular—it wasn’t until one of our reps was in Common Room that she found their VP of engineering engaging with us. That opportunity didn’t exist in Salesforce. We had never reached out before. But she found them in Common Room, she got in touch, and we booked a meeting with them. Now she’s working that opportunity.”

Apollo GraphQL helps its customers unlock their potential to work more flexibly and scalably. Common Room helps Apollo GraphQL’s sales org do the same.

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