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There is little to no doubt that as sales intelligence continues to emerge in the industry, it will become a crucial component in your job resume. As companies continue to sense the empowerment sales intelligence brings to their sales teams, experience with such platforms are beginning to become a standard for incoming sales professionals.
Here is an example of a job description for a Sales Associate Specialist:
How does experience with sales intelligence empower a sales professional?
It is best to answer this question by deriving some of the key duties from this job requirement and how sales intelligence can bring these duties to their fullest potential.
Identify key client prospect contacts: Sales intelligence platforms, such as InsideView, has the ability to build Watchlists - Watchlists help you track and monitor a list of companies for relevant business opportunities and challenges. By building a company list through sales intelligence, representatives have the ability to easily find companies within their targeted industry without spending hours of time researching.
Market to the key client prospect contacts: Using People Insights from InsideView, sales professionals now have the ability to approach the right people, with the right message, at the right time. With this tool, representatives no longer have to go digging through the Internet finding recent news about key prospects – People Watchlists deliver them daily notifications where it becomes easy to market.
Set up phone qualification calls for the territory Account Executive: The standard of cold calling and using data has begun its final bow out of the sales cycle. Of course it has its benefits of dialing 100+ people in one day and getting a couple of leads out of it. However, sales intelligence platforms brings real-time “people” information. It’s not just contact data (phone, email, address, etc.)…it’s contact information combined with social profiles (Twitter, Pandora, Facebook, etc.), University experiences, news articles, and more. When sales representatives make that initial call, they have everything they need to make a personal connection with the potential client.
Why are sales intelligence platforms becoming a job requirement?
Today we are in the midst of a social revolution. As more people across the globe become connected through the Internet, our methods of business are rapidly changing. Sales is at the tip of the spear with this new transformation of business. The issue is, not all sales representatives are utilizing the incredible resources online – primarily because researching takes time, eating up sales productivity.
More than 1/4 of sales teams use 50% or more of their time researching. (Aberdeen)
Sales professionals should no longer be expected to perform to their fullest capabilities spending half of their day researching potential prospects. Companies are starting to realize they can no longer afford to hire sales representatives who bring are not productive with research and given poor data quality. Sales intelligence platforms aggregate crucial pieces of material needed to empower sales teams in order to make effective sales calls. Companies, such as TriNet, are starting to realize that leveraging InsideView and sales intelligence cuts down time wasted researching and increases sales productivity.
“InsideView has helped us greatly improve our sales effectiveness. In doing so,we have been able to halve our research time, triple our call-to-opportunity ration, and generate more than 20% more opportunities.” Mark Stock, Sr.Director of Sales
There is little question sales intelligence is becoming a crucial tool for sales teams and professionals throughout multiple industries. Companies that require the experience of these platforms understand the power it gives to their sales professionals and the enormous benefits it has for their sales infrastructure.
These 5 trends are derived from a very, very interesting Inside Sales Trends Report: 12 in 2012 Inside Sales Trends by Josiane Feigon. Folks, you need to read the whole report and frame it to your desk throughout the year. Josiane is right on the money when it comes to what to expect in this year’s inside sales trends.
I would like to take the opportunity to show you five of these trends with some additional comments of my own.
1. #WINNING - Everyone is looking for some big wins this year in 2012. Whether you didn’t quite reach your marks in 2011 or looking to blow 2012 out of the water, you need to be following those innovators and problem-solvers who are reshaping today’s sales. They know the business and how to effectively use their sales tools. A great list to take a look at is InsideView’s 25 Influential Leaders in Sales - these are the people you should be following when it comes to inside sales.
2. Avoid the Slack Blitzer Backlash - As a buyer, how many times have you heard automated responses or pitches read straight from the script? It’s time to think about creating calculated campaigns that are personalized - you need to start selling to People, not Contacts. [Check out People Insights from InsideView to learn how to start selling to people]
3. Seize the Hidden Sales Cycle - The new normal now is our self-sufficient customers who are engaging later and alter in the sales cycle, and coming in much more informed than ever before. They still want a relationship with someone who understands their pain and meets their needs. You need to look for the right people, with the right message, at the right time – your buyers will know all about you, make sure you know everything about them and can provide for their needs. Be that person for them in 2012.
4. Mix the New Substantial Communication Cocktail - The phone and email can no longer do it alone – they need their peeps! People throughout the world are more connected to each other than ever before. No longer do you need the traveling salesman knocking on office doors hoping for an answer. Start bringing other process into the sales system to get in touch with your prospects.
The new cocktail has five ingredients: phone + texting + video + emails + social
5. Re-engineering Randomness - Say good-bye to safe and predictable linear thinking, and say hello to the weird and the wonderful. Some may be wary to admit it, but we are living in a modern industrial age as businesses getting ahead of the curve these days are the ones who think outside of the box and go beyond normal business.
Get creative and innovative for 2012.
To view the free, FULL report of Josiane Feigon’s 12 in 2012 Inside Sales Trends click HERE.
On January 26th, InsideView reached its 5,000th follower. Although some may not view this as an astronomical milestone in the metrics of social media, to us it is a huge accomplishment. We are not your typical company when it comes to social marketing, where the number of followers rule the measured success of our social engagement. Though more followers is always nice to have, we’ve held the position that its better to have 200 engaged members in our community than 10,000 people that don’t really care what we have to say and never interact with us. InsideView marks each follow as the establishment of a relationship geared towards benefiting all individuals throughout all cornerstone of business.
Congratulations to David Greenwald of PGi for being our 5000th follower! David has been using InsideView to make him more productive for years. It’s awesome to have customers like him making an impact by leveraging sales intelligence. PGi is a developer of video conferencing software that has a pretty slick interface. They were the first video conferencing platform I saw that integrated social networks into their product, and you all know how much of a fan I am when it comes to B2B use of social networks.
As a Global Sales Executive, David can really benefit following our tweets as we generally like to reach out to sales people around the world to better their skills and selling methods. Give him a follow @nexgentechsales. Thank you David!
We would like to take this opportunity for those who are reading this blog post and follow InsideView through any social media channel, to say thank you for all of the tweets and feedback you have given us over the years…You truly are our #1 fans.
You all know and love that middle of the afternoon feeling when the coffee seems to wear off and all of life’s endeavors seem to focus on the goal of making it to 5p.m. (All future and present employers please disregard that last sentence) One fantastic way to get through this midday funk is to find a really inspiring quote. I often find that tweeting a great little quote will find more retweets and responses than any other tweets. I gathered 25 quotes in sales I find to be very powerful and motivating. I hope you can take at least one to heart because there are some great ones in this list.
Shoot us a tweet with your favorite sales quote! – @insideview
- “You don’t close a sale, you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise.” ~Patricia Fripp
- “Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.” ~Thomas J. Watson Jr
- “Everyone lives by selling something.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
- “In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.” ~Nikos Kazantzakis
- “How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.” ~Gilbert K. Chesterton
- “As you travel down life’s highway…whatever be your goal, you cannot sell a doughnut without acknowledging the hole.” ~Harold J. Shayler
- “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” ~Zig Ziglar
- “And old Dave, he’d go up to his room, y’understand, put on his green velvet slippers – I’ll never forget – and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want.” ~Arthur Miller (1915 – 2005), Death of a Salesman, 1949.
- “A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.” ~Mary Kay Ash
- “Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.” ~Karl Marx
- “On any given Monday I am one sale closer and one idea away from being a Millionaire.” ~Larry D. Turner
- “It’s just called ‘The Bible’ now. We dropped the word ‘Holy’ to give it a more mass-market appeal.” ~Editor, Hodder & Stoughton The Daily Telegraph, 30 Dec 1989.
- “It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products need people to survive.” ~Nicholas Johnson
- “Most people think “selling” is the same as “talking”. But the most effective salespeople know that listening is the most important part of their job.” ~Roy Bartell
- “If you work just for money, you’ll never make it. But if you love what you are doing,and always put the customer first, success will be yours.” ~Ray Kroc
- “I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.” ~Estée Lauder
- “A smart salesperson listens to emotions not facts.” ~Unknown
- “Everyone lives by selling something.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
- “Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.” ~Malcolm Forbes
- “Day by day, what you do is who you become.” ~Heraclitus
- “The wise man puts himself last and finds himself first.” ~Lao Tsu
- “Good ideas are common – what’s uncommon are people who will work hard enough to bring them about.” ~Ashleigh Brilliant
- “Falling down is how we grow. Staying down is how we die.” ~Brian Vaszily
- “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” ~Albert Einstein
- “The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.” ~Martina Navratilova
Welcome to the year 2012! I hope the first couple of weeks is everything and more you could have hoped for in terms of sales and getting jazzed for a fresh start. I compiled a list of some blog posts I thought you all might find interesting. They outline a lot of really great best practices to get you up and running this year. For those who didn’t quite hit your marks last year, now might be a good time to start switching things up a bit. Spend the morning or afternoon reading these from some truly influential figures in sales.
- Personality Study of 1,000 Top Salespeople-Harvard Business Review - Heavy Hitter Sales Blog
- 12 Ways to Increase Sales – Inc.
- Being True To “You” – Paul Castain’s Playbook
- Optimism is a Selling Skill. Is Your Glass Half-Empty or Half Full? – Salesopedia
- How to Create an Enchanting Pitch #OfficeandGuyK – Guy Kawasaki
- 5 Leadership Tips for Sales Managers - Better Closer
- Seven Steps to Sales Transformation – Selling Power
- 8 Ways to Increase Sales – InsideView
- Want the Sales? Watch What You Say… – Joanne Black
- The Beauty of Imperfection – Jill Konrath
Shoot us at a tweet @insideview if you like our collection of blog posts!
The assembly line has been a manufacturing process in the making for hundreds of years. However, it wasn’t until 1913 that it was perfected by the Ford Motor Company creating huge ramifications for the entire industry of automobiles and manufacturing. The concept of sales intelligence seems similar of creating such ramifications as it comes brings together a different concept of sales combined with extraordinary results.
An Industrial Revolution
Henry Ford’s assembly line changed all that the world knew about manufacturing in the early 20th century. Following this new form of production, companies all over the world began to develop similar models creating a small industrial revolution as automobiles and mass production began to change everything about business. The age of sales intelligence comes with dawn of a new industrial revolution steered by the power of a more social type of business. Sales intelligence is emerging as a result of the rise of social media. Humans are now linked to one another more than ever drastically changing the method of sales. Research is showing that the theory of 6 degrees of separation has been broken by social networks like Facebook.
Efficiency
Prior to Henry Ford’s assembly lines, the production of a single car took an astronomical amount of manpower, money and time. The average car cost $850 and took about 12.5 man-hours to make. Following the introduction of the assembly line, Model Ford T’s were being sold at $290 and only took 1 hour 33 minutes to make. Sales intelligence brings similar results of vastly improving efficiency. The average sales rep spends more than half of their day (4-5 work hours) researching customers and prospects. With real-time company and contact information paired with social media and smart agents, sales reps cut down their researching time of prospects and customer data by 50% – hence, giving them more time for prospecting and selling. (Understanding the Science of Sales Intelligence)
A Change in Tradition
The assembly line was a massive change in the tradition of craftsmanship and mastery. With very small and easy work done for less amount of workers, the traditional factory production system moved away from skilled workers and a larger workforce. Sales intelligence moves beyond traditional selling and moves into an age of social selling. As mentioned in the study the Science of Sales Intelligence, 92% of prospects don’t make a meeting when cold-called or emailed by a sales rep. With the power sales intelligence sales reps are able to move out of rhythm of blindly cold-calling and instead given the right people, the right message and the right time for selling.
The most notable element to derive from this analysis is how paramount both business solutions changed their industry. Sales intelligence will one day be a huge part of the sales industry as it will cease providing reps with contacts but the person behind the data.
2012 is here folks. New goals and high ambitions are in place as the slate is cleaned for the new year. It’s time to stoke the 2011 coals and fuel the 2012 fire. Here are 15 posts I put together with some very interesting predictions and strategies for this coming year. Hope you enjoy it and best of luck for this fine year!
- 30 Social Media Predictions for 2012 From the Pros – Social Media Examiner
- 5 Sales Management Questions We Answered in 2011 – Selling Power
- 8 Great Marketing Infographics To Inspire Your 2012 Objectives – B2B Marketing Insider
- 11 B2B marketing trends to watch (or wish) for in 2012 – Customer Think
- How to Get Your Prospects to Call You Back in 2012 – InsideView
- Sales Discussions That Need To Disappear in 2012 – Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook
- Things I’m Wishing For In 2012 – Insider Sales Experts Blog
- Social Media: Five Facts to Bank On in 2012 – Ad Age Digital
- CRM 2012 Forecast – The Era of Customer Engagement – ZDNet Blog
- SaaS Predictions for 2012 – Smart SaaS
- Top 7 Critical Sales Trends for 2012 – Heavy Hitter Sales Blog
- 12 Sales Trends for 2012 – Barrett Sales Blog
- Bring on 2012 – Salesopedia
- Your 2012 Marketing Plan: Tell Me What to Do – Business Grow
- How to Create an Enchanting Pitch #OfficeandGuyK – Guy Kawasaki
It can be a pain in the rump trying to find a couple of blog posts worth spending your morning reading and jump-starting the week. Literally hundreds and thousands of sales blogs with self-proclaimed “best sales solutions” trying to cram their way into your Twitter feed, Google search results and your existence. Fret no more as I have done the searching for you and found what I deem some great sales blog posts. Take a look and have a phenomenal week.
- The Secret Lesson Hiding in Nucleus Research’s ROI Study – CRM Outsiders
- 5 Steps to Create a Killer Google+ Business Page – BrainSell Blog
- Are You Lost In a B2B Sales Lead Paradox? – Marketo Blog
- New Study Says Customers Think Companies Don’t Give a Damn ABout Their Time…Just Their Money – Brent’s Social CRM Blog
- Customer Relationship Innovation for the Emergent Social Business - Brian Vellmure’s CRM Strategies Blog
- Eight Business Apps That Will Change the Way You Work - Emergence Capital Partners
- How Much Will You Sell in 2012 With Social Media? - Selling Power
- Video: The Biggest Mistakes Sellers Make – Selling to Big Companies
- Data Myth #4: Integration Ensures Cleaner CRM Data – DataMyth
- Three Steps to Develop Yourself – S. Anthony Iannarino; the Sales Blog
You’ve finished your leftover turkey and the Christmas lights are starting to come up (cue Jingle Bell Rock!)…time to relax and look forward to the holidays? Wrong. At least not totally wrong. With the beginning of the holidays comes the end of the 4th Quarter. Like any team in sports, you don’t want that 4th quarter, second half or 9th inning to come down to the wire because it will shave years off your life. Here are 10 great blog posts that will get you ahead of the curve for the end of the year, allowing you to drink that egg nog a little deeper.
- Converting B2B Sales Data into Social Intelligence – Social Media B2B
- Five Ways to Measure If Facebook “Likes” Work for Your Business – Selling Power
- Myth #1: More Data Is Better – DataMyth.com
- 3 Big Data Myths for Enterprises – Smart Data Collective
- CEOs on Sales – What Company Leaders Want from Sales Leaders – The Sales Operations Blog
- Salesperson: Hunter or Farmer? – The New Sales Coach
- Are Your People Selling What They’re Supposed to Sell? – Partners in Excellence
- Social, Content & Selling – a Chief Revenue Officer’s Take – Inside Sales Expert Blog
- Four Keys to a Great 4th Quarter - Salesopedia
- Six Simple, yet Powerful Benioff-isms – The Sales 2.0 Advocate
Sales Intelligence is often skewed in various definitions and mostly misinterpretation. However, the real crime of this story is the mere fact that many do not see the enormous benefits of acquiring a sales intelligence application for your sales team.
Here are 10 blog posts on some numbers and practices about sales intelligence.
- Analytics in Action – The B2B Sales Intelligence Blog
- 6 Ways Advanced Market Analytics Can Predict Better Results – Studio PMG
- Sales Intelligence Is More than Smart Selling – Destination CRM
- Sales Intelligence – Kaleidico
- Sales Information is NOT Sales Intelligence – Partners in Excellence
- A Dip Into Sales Data vs. Sales Intelligence – InsideView Blog
- Improve Sales Results with Better Forecasting and Sales Intelligence in CRM 2011 – Microsoft Dynamics Blog
- Sales Intelligence – Benefits of Sales Intelligence Solutions - EzineMark.com
- Best Practices in Sales Intelligence featuring Aberdeen Research (Webinar) – Aberdeen Research
- Sales Intelligence in B2B Lead Generation – Vendere Partners
