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From Ireland to the United Kingdom, sales people just gained more intelligence as InsideView announced the general availability of InsideView UK & Ireland edition. Working with eight of the leading integrators and resellers in the region we are already making an impact for over fifty businesses since we announced our move into Ireland and the UK.
InsideView gathers tens of thousands of information sources, filters what matters, and delivers the intelligence on UK and Ireland businesses directly into all of the market-leading CRM solutions. But what will the UK and Ireland Edition offer?
UK and Ireland Edition capabilities include:
- UK and Ireland territory maps for list building and prospecting
- Turnover displayed in GBP (£) or Euros (€)
- Individual profile setting for country-specific display of currency
- Expanded content coverage for companies, executives, public sector and government entities
What will the UK and Ireland Edition Offer?
With the UK and Ireland Edition of InsideView comes new Channel Partners. Together, InsideView and these partners are bringing actionable sales insights to teams of sales professionals in enterprises across the region. CGE Software, a specialist in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and a distributor of add-on CRM enhancements, highlighted the advantages that InsideView brings to its customers.
Content Sources – UK and Ireland Edition of InsideView
In response to the huge demand from companies selling to UK and Ireland businesses, InsideView is continuing its global expansion by bringing the industry’s leading sales intelligence solution to the UK and Ireland. We pull content from over 7,000 UK specific sources, the top 8 can be found here.
“InsideView is a powerful application that gives marketing and sales people great insights into the prospects and customers they target,” said Mike Spink, sales director of CGE Software Limited. “The most significant aspect of InsideView, is its ability to identify key people in millions of companies throughout the UK and the world — and deliver rich social profiles and connection paths to them. Of all the solutions I have seen, InsideView is the absolute best.”
Audra Oliver, head of marketing communications for King Worldwide and InsideView customer offered: “We are thrilled to have InsideView not only for the company information, but for the contact details, news, smart connection feature, and financials. We sell everything from investor relations services to high-level crisis management consulting and being able to get relevant company information at the click of a button is very valuable to us. Moreover the InsideView team is helpful, responsive, and made getting started virtually effortless. I would highly recommend it.”
InsideView is also teaming with business information providers and gathering data from all major news, social, and company sources that are specific to the U.K. and Ireland. This information improves the effectiveness of sales professionals that serve these markets where more than forty-five percent of the population is active in social media.
Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView, commented, “As more businesses understand that they can get an inside edge by leveraging social, news, company and professional information, they are turning to InsideView. The delivery of InsideView for the U.K. and Ireland is an indication that we can rapidly respond to the growing demand for sales intelligence around the globe.”
In the last post we explained that most companies deal with some very specific business pressures that slow down the process of finding new prospects and getting them into the sales funnel. Knowledge about your customers, finding new prospects and having a sales process that takes too long is a common pain point for businesses.
- 42% have insufficient knowledge of the business needs of prospects
- 40% do not have the ability to identify the most likely buyers of their product
- 34% complain of having a sales process that is too long
- 21% See an increased customer churn forcing them to focus on filling the funnel
I predict in 2012 that these numbers will not change too dramatically but the results from companies that are actively leveraging technology and sales intelligence as a method of combating them will. Sales managers should be constantly on the lookout for ways to solve these business pressures and based on research by the Aberdeen Group, the top performing sales organizations have built strategies that can drive measurable results in building a sales pipeline and increasing the quality of leads.
- 59% of the best in class companies have leveraged sales intelligence tools to identify or disqualify prospects with more accuracy
- 53% of companies have been able to identify existing customers that have upsell/cross sell opportunities
- 48% of companies have increased the quality of leads intheir pipelines
- 28% use technology to capture and share sales knowledge internally.
- 21% of companies reduce the amount of time doing sales research
This research is important because it’s showing that companies that are having the problems listed above are able to continue achieving results by leveraging sales intelligence in traditional and non-conventional ways. Top performers in lead qualification teams understand that moving less qualified prospects out of their view has more value than dumping a volume of under vetted opportunities on the sales team. By not relying on data but the contextual news and social profiles of the companies and people you are contacting, better decisions can be made on which prospects to pursue and which leads to abandon.
The research study on the science of sales intelligence goes a long way in showing that companies that want to increase revenue quickly with your existing sales team can do so by leveraging technology to speed up the sales process. A strategy around using sales 2.0 applications to identify strong/weak prospects should be a key focus for your 2012 sales plan.
Just a quick poll: Are the issues described above the same as for your company?
The best way to increase sales effectiveness is to speed up the research process and then get regular updates on your prospects and the companies they work for. In an article, Forbes spoke with some leaders in sales and got insights on the sales process and what steps sales managers should take to increase their effectiveness on finding more deals and closing them faster.
The overwhelming observations and advice from Wendy Weiss and Paul Castain pointed to finding the right prospects, being more prepared for the call, having intelligence around the prospects, and leveraging non-traditional communications channels to reach prospects.
Paul Castain,Vice President of Jedi Mastery at Castain Training Systems, says a lot of salespeople research a prospect only once during the process. “Business is moving at the speed of light, and things change constantly,” he says. “When you gather information, review it over and over again before you reach out to the client.”
Finding the right prospects to contact shouldn’t be a painful process. Sales intelligence can give you a fresh group of prospects based on sales trigger events in the industry specifically in your territory. These trigger events give you accurate and relevant news about the company or person you are calling. Since we know that most executives will not respond to a cold call, using connections to get introduced is important. If you can’t locate a professional connection to your prospect, use the intelligence you gather through news sources and social media to understand your prospect and make the connection.
Top sales tips to follow
- Approach them before they are in buying mode
- Focus on finding the best prospects
- Stop calling prospects if they are not responsive. Get creative in communications
- Sales people are expected to know about their prospects before the call
- Only talk 20% of the time and listen the other 80%
- Don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions
- Turn rejection into a learning experience
- Never stop learning how to be more effective
Surprisingly there are still a large number of companies that do not leverage sales intelligence. The Aberdeen study on the Science of Sales Intelligence shows that most companies deal with some very specific business pressures that sales intelligence can help with.
- 42% have insufficient knowledge of the business needs of prospects
- 40% do not have the ability to identify the most likely buyers of their product
- 34% complain of having a sales process that is too long
- 21% See an increased customer churn forcing them to focus on filling the funnel
All of these point to companies needing to be more nimble and enabling their sales teams to move faster with more targeted information. What are you going to different in 2012 to address these business issues?
It’s near impossible to be effective in sales without the use of the internet these days. In the 2011 Sales Performance Study by CSO Insights, they researched how sales people were leveraging the internet to get their jobs done.
On average sales reps will spend 24.1% of their time each week on research and lead generation activities. It’s no wonder why sales people go to the internet for help when almost 10 hours a week is spent researching contacts and companies.
The important task of sales research.
The study found that sales research is still the most important activity of how sales people leverage the internet. This is a positive sign in the case that sales people are now at a tipping point when it comes to understanding that it’s more important to sell to people and not contacts. 77.2% of the sales people must be onto something that makes them better at selling.
Now look at the number of people leveraging the internet to actually move people through a sales cycle.
- 56% conduct webinars
- 48% of their time is in web based meetings
- 46% are giving online demos
Sales leaders should be looking for ways to increase these numbers. The best way to do this is to help your sales team on how to be more effective in sales research and decrease the amount of time they spend in that area.
Two flavors of internet research
Companies fall into one of two buckets when it comes to enabling sales people with sales intelligence. Companies either empower their sales people with technology to aid in this effort or they expect a sales person to do all of this on their own. You can imagine what will have a better impact on a sales teams ability to generate more opportunities and increase revenue. The best in class companies which made up 61% of the businesses surveyed leveraged technology to conduct searches for sales reps while 37% left the work up to the individual sales rep.
Spending 10 hours a week on research obviously takes a toll on winning more deals. Though research is important, companies should be looking at ways to increase the amount of time sales people are actually selling.
The news that Steve Jobs has resigned as Apple’s CEO has the Internet in flames. Though Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple and crafted its original vision, neither of them ran the company in the beginning. In fact, Jobs didn’t become the titular boss until he returned from exile in the late 1990s.
Let’s go through the past CEOs of Apple.
Michael Scott – Apple’s First CEO 1977- 1981
“Scotty” was the Director of Manufacturing at National Semiconductor just before he became the first CEO of Apple, serving from February 1977 to March 1981.
Michael Scott was a visionary who set the example for businesses when he got rid of all typewriters at the company. Then there was “Black Friday,” February 25, 1981. Scott personally fired 40 employees then held a party at the end of the day.
“I used to say that when being CEO at Apple wasn’t fun any more, I’d quit,” he explained. “But now I’ve changed my mind — when it isn’t fun any more, I’ll fire people until it’s fun again.” (Source)
Mike Markkula 1981 – 1983
Mike was a millionaire by the time he was 32 and one of the first angel investors in Apple. In the movie, “Something Ventured” Markkula recants the time he first met Jobs and Steve Wozniak. At first, Markulla didn’t want anything to do with Apple but after a talk with Steve Jobs about his vision of the personal computer market, the reluctant boss changed his mind. He had been the person who initially hired Michael Scott as the CEO and it was fitting for him to take over after Scott’s fall.
During that time Apple hired John Sculley from Pepsi. Again, Jobs was the catalyst, convincing Sculley that he could change the world.
“He looked up at me and just stared at me with the stare that only Steve Jobs has and he said, ‘Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?’” Sculley later remembered. “I just gulped, because I knew I would wonder for the rest of my life what I would have missed.” (source)
Wanting to retire, Mike Markkula handed the reins of the company over to John Sculley.
John Sculley 1983 – 1993
Known as the “Sculley era” this was a time when Apple was going through a ton of changes and division. There was a power struggle at Apple between Sculley and Jobs that eventually forced the co-founder out.
Sculley’s tenure was marred by infighting among top managers and expensive projects that flopped in the marketplace. (Remember the Apple Newton?) He boosted the price of the Macintosh when personal computer prices were falling. The board ousted him in 1993, when Apple was slipping toward irrelevance or worse.
THE STAT: In 1987, Sculley was reported to be the highest-paid executive in Silicon Valley, earning a then-unheard-of $2.2 million.
Michael Spindler 1993-1996
Michael Spindler had a great reputation with Sculley, in part because Spindler seemed to pose little threat to Sculley in an era when corporate politics reigned supreme. On top of that, Spindler was a brilliant strategist, which won him attention both inside Apple and in the outside world.
Spindler’s first major act as CEO was to push through a radical reorganization. Over 2,500 jobs were cut, almost 15% of the workforce, and the company was totally restructured. Instead of lumping all of product development into one division, the company would now be grouped by market. The only remnant of the old Apple was AppleSoft, which was responsible for operating system development. This flattened structure dissipated the political standing of any individual head of product development, formerly the most powerful division at Apple.
Spindler’s biggest humiliation occurred at the annual meeting, usually an opportunity for the company to talk up new products and initiatives. The one held on January 23 was not celebratory. Spindler was drilled by belligerent shareholders for Apple’s financial results. For the entire meeting, Spindler sat ashen faced with his heads in his hands and offered meek defenses for his performance (though he did acknowledge that many of the problems Apple faced were because of him). (source)
Mike Markkula, still the company’s chairman, fired Michael Spindler shortly thereafter.
Gilbert Frank Amelio 1996-1997
The shortest tenure of any Apple CEO. Amelio was CEO during the dark days of Apple when the stock hit a 12 year low. In a boardroom coup, Steve Jobs convinced the board that Amelio was NOT the man for the job. “Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water,” Jobs was quoted as saying. “My job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction”
A week after the meeting, Steve Jobs was interim CEO of Apple.
Steve Jobs 1997 – 2011
It only took 20 years but Steve Jobs finally got the title of CEO in a company that he created in his garage. Unquestionably, Steve Jobs turned Apple around and had brought innovation to the market that no other technology manufacturer has been able to match.
Jobs brought us the Mac computer. He brought us iTunes, and the iPod. He changed the way we download music, and he changed the way we use laptop computers. But Jobs made Apple arguably the most successful and powerful consumer-tech company in the world because he made the iPhone.
Steve Jobs made Apple what it is today and in a sudden move on Aug 25th 2011 Steve Jobs resigned his position at Apple, and the board named Tim Cook as the new CEO.
Tim Cook 2011 -
Tim Cook was recruited by Steve Jobs in 1998 from Compaq to lead Worldwide Operations. During his time with Apple Tim Cook was the interim CEO during Steve Jobs’s leave of absence for pancreatic cancer and again while Steve Jobs had a liver transplant.
With more money in the bank than the US Government, Apple has made itself stand out in the market in wys I don’t think anyone other than Steve jobs could have envisioned.
Steve will be missed as the CEO, but obviously will retain an influence as a board member. I have the impression that if Steve Jobs recommends Tim Cook, then we (the Apple fans) will be in great hands in the future.
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 »
Always a great event to be a part of, SXSW in Austin is a place that showcases innovation and thought leadership. Umberto Milletti the CEO of InsideView gave a compelling presentation during the event discussing the use of social media for sales teams the title of the session was called “Social Espionage & CRM: Selling to Customer 2.0″
Monitoring. Listening. Tracking. Measuring. No, this isn’t a covert CIA operation: It’s the way brands and businesses are marketing…and selling…to YOU, Customer 2.0. Is it creepy? Regardless, it’s also a reality, and it’s working tremendously, as well as being adopted at a rapid rate by everyone from your local coffee shop to Best Buy to enterprises like Adobe. From social CRM to mobile-social tech to community management, 2011 is the year of full-blown execution after, well, two years of panels discussing ‘the future of social business.’ Come hear about the truly effective processes and best practices around social customer relationship management and intelligence, and walk away with an actual plan for your business in social selling and marketing.
In true SXSW fashion the attendees were very vocal online about the content and session.
There was a lot of interest by attendees to get a copy of this presentation and we aim to please. A couple hours after Umberto was done with the session, we posted the slides on the InsideView Slideshare account and the response was amazing! The great people at Slideshare noticed and we got added into their Business and Management Spotlight.
Salespeople who understand how to use social media and sales intelligence to quickly build trust and credibility with prospects are more successful than those who do not. InsideView is the only application that combines millions of company and decision-maker contact records with actionable sales triggers, rich social profiles, relevant news alerts and major social networks into one simple user interface.
Within Microsoft Dynamics CRM, account and contact records, InsideView delivers an all-in-one sales intelligence source. Salespeople save time and trump their competitors with real-time insights that get them into more deals at the right time, with the right decision-maker and with a relevant, meaningful message.
Are you seeking improvement in sales forecasting?
Would you like to see a reduction in your sales cycle and cost?
Do you want a holistic tracking solution and dashboard inside a familiar interface?
Are you interested in reducing overhead by moving to the cloud?
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is designed to help. Be one of the first to hear how Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 can help you boost sales, improve marketing, enrich customer service interactions, and accelerate line of business application development through xRM.
This in-person Microsoft event is geared towards a select group of business and technical professionals—allowing you to network with Microsoft partners and other customers in your area, and learn how Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is being used by both public sector and commercial organizations.
Tuesday, February 08 |
Hyatt Regency Irvine 17900 Jamboree Rd
Irvine California 92614 |
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Seamless CRM Integration
InsideView integrates with Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a native mash-up in existing workflows. Deliver relevant intelligence directly into your CRM Accounts, Contacts, and Leads.
One-Click Import & CRM Enrichment
InsideView for Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows your sales & marketing team to add new prospects and update existing Accounts, Contacts, and Leads with a single click.
Drives Sales Productivity
InsideView for Microsoft Dynamics CRM makes sales teams more productive by reducing research time, increasing lead conversion and win rates.
Inside sales and field sales professionals should all have a LinkedIn profile. If not, 10 Reasons why you need a LinkedIn profile should have a effect on you. It’s always nice to meet with a group of people to discuss the use of sales 2.0 tools like LinkedIn and hear their opinions of what works and what to stay away from. One of the more interesting discussions is around who you should make as a connection vs. who you should ignore. After some internal discussion on the subject, I brought the question to a popular LinkedIn group and the contributors of Focus.com.
Adding Anyone and Everyone to LinkedIn
One school of thought is that LinkedIn is a social network that people should be very open with. There are groups of LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networker) that have collected upwards of 30,000 connections on this professional social network. If you get a connection request from someone, blindly add them into the fold and continue doing this and watch you numbers of connections skyrocket. There are actual websites that get you added to lists (for a fee) to increase your LinkedIn connections. An unofficial site known as the TopLinked.com tracks the connection counts of many LIONs.
Outside of an organized group of LinkedIn connection collectors, there is some value in regular people trying to build a large network in LinkedIn. As members we are only able to see certain information on other members based on our level of separation from them. The larger the connections you have, the higher chance you will be more closely associated with other people and see more details in their profile.
When I was starting off in sales, I had the idea that the more connections in LinkedIn I could collect would somehow equal more leads and opportunities. Since then I have learned that this is actually very counter productive. There is no way to manage let alone network with 2000+ people on a realistic level. I had to make the tough decision to ignore many of the requests for connecting that I was getting on a regular basis, mostly from sales trainers and SEO marketers. As many of the comments in the groups suggest, there has to be some sort of perceived value in the connection other than just adding a number.
Paul Castain has a large following especially in his LinkedIn group. He joined the conversation and added this:
I speak to lots of people each week about their social networking efforts and I can tell you that this pretty much never comes up.
What does come up are their perceptions of online idiots, combative people in the groups, people who are takers in their network, people who pop up out of nowhere and want an instant favor and by far the most popular are people who connect and immediate try to sell something.
Only Add People You Know
The flip side of the coin is only adding connections that you actually know. These are people you have done business with or have met or had conversations with in the past. Obviously this is a much smaller group of connections and can only be leveraged in limited ways.
Alan Prefer • …I dont believe that LinkedIn is a place for strangers, I dont have a contact on my list that i dont know…what would be the benefit be?
Limiting the number of connections you have to ONLY people you know seems a little counter productive also. If you already know the person then why would you need to add them to LinkedIn? Alan (comment above) followed up his statement by saying that he uses his connections in a very selective refferal network. In this case I can see why it would make sense to have a very select number of connections but that’s not how I think most people use LinkedIn.
Connecting with the Right People in the Right Way
Since LinkedIn doesn’t have the functionality to “follow” people outside of groups, the only way to keep up to date with some people is through an official connection with them. If there is a contact in LinkedIn that you want to connect with, the best thing to do is send them a request. If you are going to send a request to a stranger on LinkedIn, take the time to add a personal note, and by personal, I do not mean the template provided.
In the end it comes down to you personal preference. Your profile on LinkedIn is yours to control and the size of your network is something you should be aware of.
What are your personal rules for adding connections in LinkedIn? Let’s discuss it below.
