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After tremendous growth in the US, InsideView, the leader in sales intelligence and social selling, announced today the beginning of its global expansion beginning with its InsideView UK and Ireland Edition. Thousands of US companies now deploy InsideView’s award-winning company and people intelligence to increase the productivity of their customer-facing employees, improving metrics across the customer cycle, including lead conversion, win rates and customer retention and expansion.
With the UK and Ireland Edition, InsideView takes this competitive advantage worldwide, providing professionals with effective intelligence that helps them be more targeted, relevant and timely in their sales and customer management efforts. The UK and Ireland Edition of InsideView will be generally available in Q1, as a stand-alone application as well as a mash-up within market-leading CRM applications including Microsoft Dynamics, Netsuite, Oracle CRM On Demand, Salesforce.com, SAP, and SugarCRM.
“There is a worldwide demand for more intelligent ways of doing business, nowhere is this more true than in marketing, sales, and service. Our expansion today is part of our commitment to bring professionals around the globe the kind of intelligence that drives productivity, relevance and revenue.” – Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView.
Global Demand for InsideView’s Sales Intelligence
InsideView is seeing huge demand from companies selling to UK and Ireland-based businesses, where over 45% of the population is active on social media including Facebook and LinkedIn, making it the second largest market in the world for new solutions that can drive ROI from social media.
Sales Intelligence has become an imperative as the deluge of data, the changing buying process, and new social media dynamics have surfaced in customer processes. InsideView provides professionals with the most relevant information about customers and prospects, and alerts them on the best time for outreach. This intelligence results in highly effective, productive and lucrative customer-facing employees: In fact, companies that employ InsideView’s style of intelligence see a ten percent improvement in top-line revenue.
Sales Intelligence Tailor Made for the UK and Ireland
Thousands of users are already using InsideView for targeting UK and Ireland, and with this launch they and other customers will have access to deeper and tailor-made sales intelligence . InsideView gathers and analyzes tens of thousands of information sources, filters what matters, and delivers the intelligence directly into all of the market-leading CRM solutions, resulting in more effective sales and even improved CRM engagement.
For its UK and Ireland Edition, InsideView is partnering with top global and local providers of business information, as well as gathering and analyzing information from all major online news publications, user-generated, and social media sources specific to UK and Ireland.
InsideView is also teaming with leading CRM system integrators including Outsourcery, Ciber, Alfapeople, ConsultCRM, The CRM Business and No Blue to bring its intelligence to relevant CRM platforms in the UK and Ireland. ConsultCRM, one of the UK’s leading Microsoft Gold Partners specializing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, is delighted to be partnering with InsideView in its go-to-market expansion.
“Our clients are constantly under pressure to maximize the value from their Microsoft CRM deployment. InsideView adds immediate value because it offers ready-integrated real-time company intelligence, contact data, news, tailored alerts and even social media,” said John Pearson, Sales Director at ConsultCRM. “We are excited to be working with an offering that truly answers the ‘What’s in it for me?’ question for CRM users in sales and account management.”
In a recent report by the Altimeter group they identified that many companies have formalized their social media efforts for customer facing employees. I expected Marketing to be the top of the list but was surprised to see Sales so far behind with only 11% of the companies having a formal approach for engagement through social media. With recent studies showing that 61% of LinkedIn members use the site for Networking, Sales is a prime group to be engaging with prospects and customers in social media. Whats even more surprising is that 31% of companies still block social media from all employees.
If marketing is the focal point of social media engagement, sales NEEDS to be brought into the loop. Training sales teams to use social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs can have a huge impact on building pipeline and driving awareness of your company. Customer centric marketing brings a 1:1 relationship with prospects and customers that can be transitioned and managed by sales teams.
Leveraging social media and online communities to drive revenue works. You may remember the post Should Sales people be Blogging where we explained how IBM is leveraging social selling. In the Social Selling University we have had great speakers like Jill Konrath, Anneke Seley, Joanne Black and others that have given Enterprise Social Selling tips and strategies to members of the community. Umberto Millet our CEO has written a number of articles around the revolution of social selling in B2B.
Enterprise social selling is growing up. With the growing desire for Social CRM within companies, collecting social conversations for analysis was only scratching the service. What the social enterprise does with those conversations is where the rubber meets the road. Social media is more than a tool for marketing people and it’s being well established that every department across the enterprise can leverage social media for everything from prospecting, opportunity management and customer retention.
One of the best messages from Dreamforce was the realization from 45,000 attendees that data is good but it is not enough to move the revenue needle. The comments from current customers and new businesses that stopped by the booth validated that cold calling is dead and without a very targeted message with relevant information from both traditional sources and social media, a sales rep’s chances of getting contact and creating new opportunities is very slim.
With the announcement that Jigsaw and D&B are being combined to create Data.com, our customers are echoing our response that this is just further validation that data is a commodity and without a layer of intelligence to help sales, marketing and support identify the right people to contact, you may as just use last years Yellow Pages.
Where’s the value-add? D&B and Salesforce are pitching this idea as a marriage between two classes of data: Salesforce contacts and D&B business. (For “Salesforce contacts,” read “Jigsaw.”) But Jigsaw data already associates contacts with their companies, and already contains (by Salesforce’s own estimate) over 4 million crowd-sourced corporate profiles. Of course, this calls into question the authenticity (and accuracy) of those profiles versus D&B’s professional research.
Keeping the entire company on the same page with prospects and customers is something that CRM can help with but it’s not the answer. There are so many things changing with companies on a daily, weekly and monthly basis that it’s impossible for anyone or any company to keep up with all the changes in leadership, news and events. This is why we believe that sales intelligence is the answer.
Adding a layer of intelligence to your sales process will dramatically increase sales productivity and increase your opportunity win rates. Does social media answer all the needs of every sales organization? No. But it adds an additional layer that gives sales people an edge when identifying new prospects and making that first phone call less awkward. Even marketing automation companies like Marketo see the value in leveraging social media for sales.
10 additional Articles on Data vs. Intelligence
- The problem with BIG data.
- 10 tips to drive sales productivity.
- Social Selling in the Enterprise
- The Only Sales Application on the Gartner Magic Quadrant
- Data Accuracy vs Quality
- Sales and Marketing alignment with social media
- Listen to your customers using social intelligence
- Is social media the new cold call?
- Using Twitter for social selling.
- Intelligence Trumps Data for Sales Productivity
We are excited that we were included for the second year running to the Gartner Research Magic Quadrant for Social CRM. InsideView is the only company in the Magic Quadrant specifically addressing the sales processes, intelligent monitoring, outreach and collaboration for sales professionals. This is only the second time that Gartner Research has addressed the growing market of Social CRM (sCRM).
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In the report’s introduction, Gartner analysts mandate measurable benefits of any social CRM vendor included in the Magic Quadrant. InsideView’s integrated, seamless sales intelligence has been shown by analyst firm Aberdeen Research to improve top-line revenue by more than ten percent.
“While others focused on one-to-many marketing and service areas, we have focused on the one-to-one relationships critical for sales,”
“InsideView distinguishes itself as one of the few vendors in social CRM focused on sales processes,” reads the Gartner report, available for purchase here. The report continues, “With an emphasis on usability, InsideView has promoted a compelling vision for applying search and relationship mining technologies to aid salespeople with key informational needs around sourcing contacts and leads, as well as monitoring business events and personnel within accounts.” Ease-of-use is also praised: “…easy to set up and personalize to specific needs (i.e., list building, lead generation, lead qualification, precall research in prospecting, account research, etc.).”
The report also highlights InsideView’s ability to uncover new sales opportunities and relationships, as well as to provide real-time intelligence and social information on leads and prospects through its unique Buzz Tab. One new area of emphasis by InsideView is the establishment of broader community: just last month, InsideView launched a Lithium-powered community for its nearly 100,000 users.
“While others focused on one-to-many marketing and service areas, we have focused on the one-to-one relationships critical for sales,” said Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView. “It’s great to see the industry analysts agree on the importance of these one-to-one relationships. We are now expanding more into the areas of marketing and service as these recognize the need for deeper relationships. Look for some exciting announcements about our offering soon.”
TweetSocial Media has become a staple to many companies. Recent research indicates that 80% of companies with at least 100 employees will use social media marketing this year. That’s up from about 75% last year. Based on the US Census from 2007 that’s millions of establishments that are leveraging social media.
Companies have realized that a solid social media strategy is vital to the companies goals for revenue and growth. Emphasis still remains on common business goals like
- Customer retention
- Customer acquisition
- Customer profitability
- Branding
With these priorities in place, traditional methods of execution are being supplemented by social media. Even with such large numbers of companies leveraging social media, research shows that only 17% of them feel they are ahead of the curve when it comes to using social media to achieve these goals. (source)
One of the things I notice most when talking to companies about their social media strategies is that it focuses primarily around marketing and support. These have obvious benefits that can be measured and scaled to show an ROI.
What we are finding more of now are companies that want to be in that group of companies that are leveraging social media a head of the curve. This is done through the use of applications and training. Where many companies are building a more strategic focus is in their sales teams where social media is getting used to drive revenue and customer acquisition.
With sales enablement and sales intelligence applications the ability to turn social media into a sales tool becomes a reality and even a necessity to many companies that see the financial benefit of them.
When companies become active in social networks with the goals listed above, the actions should not stop with the marketing department. Sales teams should be trained and active in the networks where marketing has identified new prospects. The goal is to bring the prospects from a virtual environment into a live conversation with the sales team. This may be easier with some prospects than others but some prospects will gladly take a demo or a call with the sales team but want an active engagement online as well during the buying process.
If your company is not activating the sales team members to engage in social media where the prospects are responsive (that’s where you found them originally) then you risk losing them. Your sales team may lose them in the sea of other emails and calls that they receive on a daily basis.
When a prospect is engaged online and sales or lead qualification gets involved there should be an effort to incorporate a social selling strategy that blends common sales process with an online one. You’ll find more engaged buyers and customers that communicate with you in many channels and become advocates for your company during the buying process and throughout their time as a customer.
As of today we are excited to announce that EVERY SugarCRM customer has access to InsideView. We talked in April about our commitment to the SugarCRM customers that had requested a more integrated mashup of our sales intelligence application. After a bit of development and customization, we have completed the project and have started deploying InsideView to nearly 70,000 SugarCRM customers. This is the largest instant deployment of InsideView across a CRM customer base ever. Another 500,000 will see InsideView as they voluntarily upgrade to the newest release of SugarCRM throughout the rest of the year.
Things have changed for B2B sales
The availability of information for both buyer and seller has increased dramatically. Most of your customers are leveraging the internet and social networks to research and validate product choices. Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and forums have given prospects easy access to your existing customers and people are talking about you, your products and your competitors. It’s impossible to analyze all of this data on your own and make the best decisions on who the best people are to contact and provide value to them by solving their problems. That’s where sales intelligence comes in and saves the day while you’re closing the deal.
InsideView helps reps connect with prospects through their personal and extended professional networks including colleagues, ex-colleagues, and reference customers. Building relationships and trust with your customers and prospects has become more important than ever in a virtual environment. Phone calls and email work well but when you combine those with connecting on social networks for a more complete communication path, you can be sure to always know and be in touch with the people that are making the decisions.
We are excited about this announcement. Working with the SugarCRM teams has been wonderful.
Business Insights, Contacts and News Immediately at Fingertips of Users of SAP CRM 7.0
InsideView, a sales intelligence leader, today announced its InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence 2.0 solution is now SAP-certified for integration with the SAP® Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application 7.0, earning “Powered by SAP NetWeaver®” certification status.
Through the integration of InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence with SAP CRM 7.0, users now have access to complete and relevant intelligence on millions of companies and decision-maker contacts worldwide, directly inside the platform. Users can spend more time selling and less time researching their prospects and customers. InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence dramatically improves sales performance by bringing together traditional business information from the world’s leading sources, breaking news and social intelligence about companies and contacts into a single window within SAP CRM 7.0. The “all-in-one” sales intelligence makes it fast and easy to discover prospects, qualify leads, engage decision makers, close deals, and grow customer relationships and top-line revenue.
InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence also incorporates all major social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs for easy access to warm connections and real-time insight about customers and prospects. Sales intelligence has been shown to increase revenue per sales person by more than 10 percent, compared to sales people who only have access to simple contact or company data.
“We are excited to deliver certified integration between InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence and SAP CRM 7.0, bringing rich business insight, alerts and actionable social media to customers,” said Heidi Tucker, Vice President, Global Alliances, InsideView. “The solution now integrated with SAP CRM delivers valuable functionality to empower 21st century sales warriors to achieve competitive edge.”
SugarCRM Users To Have Seamless Access to InsideView for Social Selling
InsideView, the social selling and sales intelligence leader, and SugarCRM, the world’s fastest growing customer relationship management (CRM) company, announced today that InsideView’s powerful sales intelligence solution will come preinstalled in all editions of SugarCRM. The integrated solution will provide all of SugarCRM’s users with immediate access to InsideView’s state-of-the-art sales intelligence at no incremental cost. The announcement was made at the annual SugarCon customer and developer’s conference.
The partnership comes at a time when sales people are overwhelmed with an explosion of data that leaves them spending more time searching for information and less time selling. InsideView’s sales intelligence dramatically improves sales performance by aggregating the most valuable sources of external information sales people need about companies and contacts into a single, easy-to-access view within SugarCRM. This sales intelligence makes it fast and easy to discover prospects, qualify leads, engage decision-makers, close deals, and grow both customer relationships and top-line revenue.
Sales intelligence has been shown to increase revenue per sales person by more than ten percent, compared to sales people who only have access to simple contact or company data. InsideView’s platform aggregates and draws relevance from the huge quantity of business information available in tens of thousands of worldwide business publications; social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs; and financial and contact information.
InsideView CEO Umberto Milletti’s participation in a keynote address at SugarCon – SugarCRM’s marquee global user group event – highlights the importance and urgency of social selling and sales intelligence for today’s sales professionals.
“Sales professionals using SugarCRM need to be able to create effective and actionable information from the massive amounts of data presented to them at any given time,” said Clint Oram, CTO at SugarCRM. “With this partnership, InsideView brings meaningful business insight for millions of companies worldwide directly into our easy-to-use platform. With this integration, any user’s view of his or her leads, accounts, contacts and opportunities will include real-time, relevant social and business insights and triggers.”
“We are excited to partner with SugarCRM to empower all SugarCRM customers and partners with automatic access to rich insight about millions of companies and key decision-makers around the world,” said Heidi Tucker, VP Global Alliances at InsideView. “Combined with SugarCRM’s ‘single system of truth’ and collaborative platform, “InsideView will help SugarCRM users find more relevant ways to connect with their prospects and customers to understand their important business issues. “
Building off the existing integration between Sugar and SalesView, the sales intelligence solution from InsideView, the companies are announcing a combined social CRM and sales intelligence solution. The latest edition of Sugar 6 will include SalesView pre-loaded into the system. This offers users the ability to tap into thousands of global data sources, as well as the vast universe of social media to gain relevant and actionable insight into their prospects and customers.
“A CRM system is only as good as the data inside of it,” said Umberto Milletti. “By accessing real-time sales intelligence and relevant social information within Sugar 6, users can discover prospects, qualify leads, engage decision-makers, close deals and grow customer relationships more quickly. SalesView and Sugar together form the building blocks of a winning social CRM strategy for any business.
SugarCRM is the first major CRM platform to ship with InsideView’s sales intelligence built right in. SugarCRM Cloud edition users will see InsideView immediately when accessing the newest SugarCRM version. All users of SugarCRM’s on-premise edition may download InsideView from SugarExchange or upgrade to the latest release of SugarCRM. To learn more about InsideView and how sales intelligence can dramatically improve your sales cycle, please visit www.insideview.com/SUGARCRM. Read the rest of this entry »
Salesforce.com shakes the SaaS world again with this morning’s announcement that they have acquired social monitoring company Radian6 for $326 Million. This is the first example of a CRM company making a definitive move into the Social Monitoring space.
Radian6 works with clients like Dell, GE, Kodak and UPS to help monitor, analyze and engage in ‘hundreds of millions’ of social media conversations. Salesforce argues that the acquisition of the company will enable it to enhance all of its products, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com.
This is a proof point to the changing business environment we live in and why Social Selling is going to be the next evolution of a sales environment. I think that we are still a little ways off from a sales team being able to leverage a social monitoring tool like Radian6 but it will happen and leveraging social media and having a sales intelligence tool combined would make most sales teams light years ahead of their competition.
With Radian6, salesforce.com is gaining the technology and market leader in social media monitoring. We see this as a huge opportunity. Not only will this acquisition accelerate our growth, it will extend the value of all of our offerings. – Marc Benioff
It’s encouraging to see a major CRM vendor like Salesforce investing in this. The immediate impact will be seen in support and marketing departments but getting sales people configured to use an application like this and building a social selling methodology around it could be a long while out. If you are interested in knowing about how to leverage social media for sales, sign up for the Social Selling University and get a free license of InsideView for Sales.
