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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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What Do Big Ben and the Cliffs of Moher Have to do with Sales Intelligence?

February 6, 2012 in Technology by Koka Sexton | 2 comments

Big Ben explodes with sales intelligence - Insideview

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.”

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5 Ways Sales Intelligence can Increase Revenue

December 13, 2011 in Sales 2.0, Sales Data, Sales Intelligence, Technology by Koka Sexton | 7 comments

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.

Sales Intelligence Research

  • 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?

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Sales Intelligence at the Speed of Light

December 12, 2011 in Prospecting, Sales Intelligence, Technology by Koka Sexton | 3 comments

Sales Intelligence at the Speed of Light

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?

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Top 12 Ways Sales Leverages the Internet

November 28, 2011 in Prospecting, Sales 2.0, Sales Intelligence, Technology by Koka Sexton | 4 comments

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.

Top 12 Ways Sales Leverages the Internet - CSO Insights

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.

 

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