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Get the Inside Edge with InsideView

March 21, 2012 in Conferences, Product Updates, Sales Intelligence, Social Selling by Kevin Baldacci | 2 comments

The Insider Summit, the recently-announced alliance with Microsoft, the state-of-the-art features added every 3 weeks – everyone is clamoring to know: What can InsideView do for my sales team??

Recently, sales intelligence has become one of the hottest trends in technology. InsideView analyzes data from social media, news, and company sources and alerts sales professionals when opportunities for relevant engagement arise. In plain text, it empowers you and your sales team with the intelligence you need to reach out and sell to prospects.

In light of all of the questions and curiosity about sales intelligence, we have created an overview video of all of the features you need to know. Watch the video and imagine the power you could have with this tool.

If you’re wondering about the inside edge you could have with InsideView, check out our Community to ask questions and learn more about all of our features.

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It Might Be Time for Sales Intelligence – 5 Signs That You Need It

March 8, 2012 in Sales 2.0, Sales Intelligence, Social Selling by Kevin Baldacci | 4 comments

“Sales intelligence is the combination of not only business data, but social context, how you’re connected to a lead or prospect, valuable news insight, and real-time triggers that inform you when to take action. In fact, we’re delivering 35 million unique news trigger events to our users a year to help them sell better and generate more revenue.” -Umberto Miletti, CEO of InsideView

1. You are buying lists for your sales team

Last year I was interviewing for a sales position and was analyzed by how well I could cold call a list of 100 low-priority prospects. This would have been fine and dandy if the list wasn’t a year old and 20 of the 100 people had the wrong name or outdated phone number. Think about it…after one year, 1/5 of the list was deemed almost completely useless.

Organizations are changing the way they collect information and contact prospects and customers - 98 percent say they waste their budget each year on inaccurate contact data. (DataMyth.com) With data being poured into in the Internet everyday, there is no way lists of contact information should be cutting it anymore for sales professionals.

The age of lists and phonebooks are over for sales teams. The tools you need are out there on the Internet and sales intelligence can bring it to you all in one package. 

2. Social Selling is not a part of your sales cycle

Marketing should not be the only department interacting through social media – sales teams across the board need to immerse themselves in the social world as well. Buyers are turning to social media for feedback and answers to business challenges. Don’t wait for your phone to ring, generate opportunities by reaching out and answering questions or at least let them know you’re listening.

One of InsideView’s sales representatives sent this tweet the other day:

I know many people are thinking, “So what? It’s just a tweet. And great, they responded.” However, Megan is now on Xata Nation’s radar – they know she is out there listening to their success.

As Koka Sexton likes to say during a lot of his speaking engagements: Be different, Be better.

Potential prospects are on social media asking questions and seeking answers. You need to be out there answering these questions or showing your prospects that you are listening – otherwise your competitors will. Sales intelligence packages social media with contact information so that you are able to sell to the person rather than the business card.

3. You are spending half of your day researching prospects – “I can use search engines to do my research.” 

As a salesperson, you should never be pushing the clock researching prospects or not devoting your fullest efforts to effectively finding the right people prospects. Time is precious in the world of sales but you should never feel overwhelmed by it.

Do you really want to search for a company and get this kind of result?

751,000 is a little dramatic but I think you get the picture. Search engines are great for research but they eat up a lot of time. More than 50% of the average sales professional spends 1/4 of their day researching potential prospects. (Aberdeen)

Consider leveraging technology and sales intelligence so you can cut that amount of time in half and free up some of that precious time to be talking to prospects and customers. If InsideView were to create a contact page for Darth Vader, this is what it would look like. Imagine the sales force you would have selling to a guy like Anakin Skywalker…

4. You are shooting from the hip and not using trigger events

Identifying key triggers or reasons to get in touch with prospects at just the right time is extremely valuable. Barbara Giamanco, EVP Sales and Social Media at Social Centered Selling, wisely pointed out in a recent webinar of ours that timing is everything in sales.

Look at it this way…Give somebody a tissue in the street randomly and they’ll think you might have lost your mind. Give them a tissue after they sneeze and they’ll probably be more inclined to thank you and strike up a conversation.

Sales Intelligence brings you Watchlists that alert your sales representatives of trigger events (leadership changes, mergers, executives in the news, etc.). Imagine the effectiveness of your sales team with trigger events being delivered to each representative on a daily basis.

5. You are not hitting your sales marks

Sales intelligence is heading in the direction of changing the sales cycle forever. Remember how sales was done only a decade ago? Lists of phone numbers, cold calling, mail marketing, dialing for dollars. With today’s social revolution, you now have more weapons at your disposal as a sales professional than ever before. Sales intelligence brings you contact information as well as connections, sales alerts, social platforms and a lot more. Empower yourself with this tool and don’t be left behind.

Check out this graph below. The Best-in-Class companies utilize sales intelligence and see numbers like 28.4% average year-over-year increase in total company revenue.

To see the rest of the incredible results the Aberdeen Group found about sales intelligence, download our whitepaper: Chance Favors the Prepared Mind: Understanding the Science of Sales Intelligence

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4 Steps on How Focusing on People, Not Contacts Will Increase Your Revenue

February 23, 2012 in Sales Intelligence, Social Media for Sales, Social Media Tips, Social Selling, Software Tools, Technology by Kevin Baldacci | 5 comments

Do you really have a good understanding of a potential prospect with just his or her contact information? Looking at our friend, Anakin Skywalker, it is clear that there is more to a person than what you see on a business card. The sales professionals who are making it in your industry are the ones leveraging unique people insights gleaned from social media and other resources to reach the right person, with the right message, at the right time.  Click on Anakin’s business card to see what I mean. Here are some steps that are sure to increase revenue by focusing on the person rather than the contact.

1. Shift the mindset from a contact to a person

Do you sometimes feel like your contact information is being passed around between companies, being abused and reused? How many cold calls and unsolicited emails do you receive each day? (And how likely are you to respond to them?) Your prospects are feeling that same pain. 

People are not putting their information online because it is a “trend” or “everyone is doing it”. People are looking to be acknowledged as individuals – the desire to be acknowledged is human nature. As a sales professional, you need to be utilizing social media to its fullest potential to get your emails and phone calls (even your prospecting tweets) to stand above the hundreds of others.

Check out the difference between the red and blue mock notes to a potential prospect. 

 Which email are you more likely to respond to? Ditch the scripts and start digging around LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to add some personality behind your initial emails and phone calls.

“Remember that trust and credibility are key to lead generation. Nothing improves a sales pitch more than incorporating commonalities and shared experiences.”
- Maria Pergolino; Senior Director of Marketing, Marketo

2. Integrate the people approach across the organization

Marketing should not be the only department interacting through social media – sales teams across the board need to immerse themselves in the social world as well. Buyers are turning to social media for feedback and answers to business challenges.

A recent study of more than 700 B2b marketers, conducted by Wildfire Interactive, found that 58% of the companies saw increases in sales and partnerships as a result of including social media as part of their overall strategy.

Potential prospects are online asking questions and seeking answers. Your sales representatives need to be out there answering these questions, otherwise your competitors will.

3. Avoid social silos

Many B2B firms are mistaking the individual social activity of their employees for a social strategy. Your organization needs to unite under a set of common goals and develop a cohesive strategy that fits the company’s social graph. A company with a sales team united and active in the social world is a powerful unit. Your customers are talking online, asking questions about your business – develop a strategy within your team to make a united, cohesive effort to seek out and lend a helping hand. Companies cannot do this relying on individual sales reps who can only cover a fraction of your industry’s social graph.

4. Reach the right people at the right time

As a sales professional, it is hard to not put your head down and go 100 mph trying to make those sales marks. However, you have to realize there is a science with sales and that it is important to reach the right person at the right time – timing is everything when making that initial call. How exactly is that accomplished?

“After implementing InsideView, we’ve gone from dialing for dollars to targeted social selling. Our team now spends most of their time learning about and understanding their prospects and how to best leverage relationships. As a result, our meeting acceptance rates have gone from 15% to around 60%.“ Michael Lodato; Senior VP, Sales and Marketing, NHR

Sales Intelligence is becoming one of the most powerful tools for sales teams across many industries. Through a platform such as InsideView, sales teams have the ability to receive alerts to connect with people after a major event (a.k.a. trigger event), such as an acquisition, promotion or relocation. This allows your team to effectively connect with potential prospects because there is much more value to those initial calls. Relevancy is key with today’s buyer. 

Secret Step. Use the Sales Force!

This blog post is only a minor piece of the puzzle. Download this guide: Shifting the B2B Marketing Paradigm from Contacts to People, to unleash the full power of the sales force in you.

Click HERE to download this guide to increase revenue

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Why is Sales Intelligence Becoming So Critical for Professional Experience?

February 14, 2012 in Sales 2.0, Sales Data, Sales Intelligence, Social Selling, Software Tools, Technology by Kevin Baldacci | 3 comments

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.

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5 Inside Sales Trends to Expect in 2012

February 7, 2012 in Sales Intelligence, Social Selling, Tips and Tricks by Kevin Baldacci | 3 comments

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. 

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