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.”

Closing out the year we wanted to look over the content that you have found most interesting and shared most often. 2011 was a big year for sales intelligence and the use of technology by sales teams to be more effective in finding new opportunities and closing more deals.

This is the list of the top 25 sales intelligence posts that people read during 2011

1. 25 Influential Leaders In Sales
2. How Science is Changing Sales As We Know It
3. Why Cold Calling is the Bottom of the Barrel
4. 40 Social Media B2B Infographics
5. Gamification of the Sales Process
6. 10 Reasons You Need a LinkedIn Profile
7. 15 Posts on Why Cold Calling Is On Its Way Out the Door
8. The History of Apple CEOs
9. Bridging the Massive Social Media Gap Between Sales and Marketing
10. Have No Fear: Why Sales Teams SHOULD Be On Social Media
11. Creating a Sales Plan and Executing It.
12. 10 of the Best Sales Sites
13. The Death of Cold Calling – Ending the Debate
14. 10 SlideShare Presentations That Will Make You a Better Salesperson
15. Why Social Media is Important to the Sales Process.
16. Top 10 Reasons for using Facebook for your Business
17. 20 Awesome Sales Posts You Should Read
18. 5 Great SlideShare Presentations on B2B Selling
19. The Social Media Landscape – Facts and Figures for B2B Sales (Infographic)
20. Should Sales People Be Blogging?
21. The Problem with Big Data
22. The Future of Social CRM
23.  Do You Listen to Your Customers?
24. 10 tips for Driving Sales Productivity: Tip #1 
25. A Dip Into Sales Data vs. Sales Intelligence

• 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?

It’s not only sales managers that are interested in increasing sales productivity. Every sales rep that is serious about their career tries to be more productive and effective in their sales efforts. One of the best ways to learn to be more productive as a sales person is to learn what is working and what is not by other experts.

Sure, we have a bunch of posts on how to be a more productive sales person but there is always more tips and tricks that come from other well known people that should be shared.

1. How Entrepreneurs Can Increase Productivity by 500% -TechCrunch
2. Top 5 Sales Strategies for 2012. Accelerate Your Momentum with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
3. The Three Types of Team Commitment
4. What’s Driving Your Customers Away?
5. 8 Ways to Incentivize Employees to Use CRM
6. Negative Assumptions Before Your Calls Usually Come True
7. What’s Your Plan Once You’ve Connected Via A Social Network?
8. The 10 Biggest Referral Mistakes Salespeople Make
9. Anatomy Of A Lousy Sales Email
10. One Marketing Guy Who Gets It (What Sales Needs, That Is)
11. Why Sales Forecasts Are a Joke
12. The Presentation Trap: Why Making Presentations Can Cost You the Sale
13. 10 Tips that Separate the Good Sellers from the Great Ones
14. Ignite More Sales with Sales Intelligence
15. Determining What Metrics to Track with CRM

Ignite Smarter Conversations
Once a contact becomes a qualified lead or opportunity, sales needs to know who to reach and how, and what to say to get their attention. It’s no longer just who you know that will make business deals happen, but what you know about who you know, tightly synched with when and where you should know it. After all, according to IDC, IT buyers indicate that ~54% of sales reps are unprepared for their initial customer meetings.

To prep for the meeting, your reps can tap into sales intelligence to pinpoint what’s top of mind for the contact and immediately establish rapport on the call. With access to multiple data sources in a single place, your sales reps will spend less time on research, yet will be more effective on the phone.

A study by CSO Insights shows that even when using CRM:

• It takes sales reps an average of 4 voice mails or emails to get that first, pivotal appointment with a prospect
• They often have to wait 3 to 4 days for a response
• 60% of sales reps waste the equivalent of 6 selling weeks a year just trying to get customers on the phone.

Combined, traditional business information services and social media can help create the best prospect intelligence, enabling sales professionals to sort through potential deals and dealmakers. With insight into companies (for example, M&A activity, new leadership, and major initiatives), contacts (title, email, and phone number), and social profile information or people insights (“I see we have friends in common,” or “We went to the same school,” or “You recently tweeted about X”), your sales reps can start the conversation off right.

The sales reps that take advantage of the intelligence to be found in the online conversation are reaping the rewards. In a study of sales reps within 2,000 companies, the reps that turned to sales intelligence ended up with higher win rates.

How ‘smart’ are the conversations you have with prospects?

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.”

Let’s face it, making contact with C-level executives and other decision makers is not an easy task. 92% of C-level executives NEVER respond to email blasts or cold-calls. According to the 2011 Sales Performance Optimization Survey from CSO Insights, the average sales professional spends 25% of the workday researching potential prospects. Yet after hours of scouring the web, you still don’t know who the right buyer is and what technologies they use.

In this interview 1to1 Media‘s Tom Hoffman speaks with Ralf VonSosen, Vice President, Marketing at InsideView, about the steps that decision-makers can take to collect and act on intelligence about B2B customers.

Spray and pray tactics don’t work.

Contact data is not enough. A phone book is not an efficient tool to go after new prospects. Traditional methodologies of cold calling is dead, without context around your contact and having relevant information on your prospect you are not going to get their attention. Building a story around your product and how that can help a specific prospect can’t be achieved by dialing for dollars. That sales process just doesn’t scale any longer.

The average sales professional spends 25% of the workday researching potential prospects

Gathering personal insights

Once your sales teams learn to leverage sales intelligence applications and cut down their research times they can become more effective selling machines. Most sales professionals do not have the opportunity to go into a prospects office and look at the photos on their desk, understand their pains and get the complete view of their situations.

Contact data can’t provide this but through other technologies all sales people have the ability to get into the customers brain and see what they are dealing within the industry, corporate initiatives and even their personal lives. Traditional news and social profiles open up a world of possibilities to both customers and sales reps to make sure that communications are timely, relevant and welcomed. We are now dealing with the social enterprise where companies and the employees are actively engaged with social networks, sales teams that can adjust to this trend will reap all the rewards while companies that lag behind will be left wondering “Where did all my customers go?“

Summer of Sales Intelligence: InsideView Sees Huge Gains in Customers and Major CRM Platforms, Delivers 8 Million Sales Triggers in Recent Quarter

Ten times more companies started using intelligence to sell better in 2011′s Q3 than any other quarter. That’s according to the latest numbers from InsideView, the leading provider of sales intelligence for the enterprise. The company also revealed it delivered more than 8 million unique new opportunity sales triggers to its customers during the same period.

Intelligence Over Data: Quality and Quantity in Harmony
InsideView’s sales intelligence provides something data simply can’t: a competitive advantage. Anyone can provide a current title, phone number or email address on a lead. Only InsideView can provide this basic information, but more. For example, a business event — like an acquisition or merger — that warrants sales outreach, or news event like a product launch, that matters to the ongoing sales conversation.

“While other companies are betting their business on providing more and more data, we’re finding accelerating demand for higher quality sales intelligence, not just more data,” said Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView. “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.”

Independent research firm Aberdeen Research has found that InsideView’s style of sales intelligence increases several key areas for sales success, including sales quota attainment, customer retention and overall revenue growth.

“We have seen that, in 2010, the best-in-class organizations outperformed by achieving 28% revenue growth compared to just 3% for others — and intelligence is a key reason for this,” said Peter Ostrow of Aberdeen Research.

Big Growth and Launch of CRM+
InsideView’s own growth saw almost 10,000 new professionals using its free product, and over 250 enterprises signing on to its award-winning paid version, since July. In August, the company launched CRM+, which brought its intelligence technology to a broader business sector including marketing, service, human resources and more.

“InsideView gives businesses sales intelligence and information that will aid sales operations with helping develop and maintain leads and clients,” noted TechCrunch in coverage of InsideView’s CRM+ launch. “CRM+ now brings social data to all CRM users (marketing, operations, customer service, etc.), not just sales.”

InsideView was also the only provider of sales intelligence included in August’s Gartner Magic Quadrant for Social CRM.

Success On All CRM Solutions
InsideView’s leadership continues across all major CRM platforms:

• Salesforce.com: InsideView continues to be the all-time most popular sales app on the salesforce.com AppExchange.
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM: In July, the company was selected as a 2011 Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace Solution Excellence Partner of the Year.
• SAP: Earlier in the summer, InsideView gained the prestigious “Powered by SAP NetWeaver®” certification status.
• SugarCRM: In June, InsideView and SugarCRM combined forces to bring InsideView standard and out-of-the-box.
• Oracle CRM OnDemand: InsideView is part of the Inner Circle program.
• NetSuite: Collaboration through the Preferred Partner Program.

To learn more about InsideView, please visit www.insideview.com.

Meanwhile, at InsideView we have continued to invest in our products and our people, growing our business at over 100% year-over-year.  To keep up with our rapid growth, we need to find the most passionate, competent and innovative employees.  I believe that many of you fit that bill, and I’m writing this open letter to invite you to join InsideView. You will find a fun, vibrant environment with very bright people, and an open culture that fosters collaboration and innovation.

We are passionate about our products and our customers.  Last month’s data.com announcement made it clear to me that D&B has given up on Hoover’s in the critically important sales & marketing ecosystem, and that customers will need to look elsewhere to find sophisticated sales intelligence. I believe most of them will decide that InsideView is their best path to productivity, joining scores of Hoover’s customers that have already chosen to switch to InsideView.

We are looking for talent in every part of our business and in several locations.  The positions include Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, and Content. Locations are in the field, at our San Francisco headquarters, and for our soon-to-be-opened Austin office (I love Austin’s entrepreneurial culture, and I see the opportunity for Austin to become a main hub for InsideView).

If you have a passion for innovation, customer success and are looking for a vibrant work environment, please email us at beyondhoovers@insideview.com for a confidential conversation. We’d also be glad to have you talk to any of the ex-Hoover’s employees who now work at InsideView, where they have found new opportunities to grow and delight customers.

We have just begun in delivering our vision, one where customer intelligence makes all customer-facing employees dramatically more productive. If you share my passion, we’d love to talk to you.

Umberto Milletti @umbertom

CEO & Founder, InsideView

Originally posted on Umberto’s blog.

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.

Updated Connection Summary: You are now able to get a snapshot of any personal & professional connections from any company. This was a request brought to us by a few customers that wanted a snapshot in the record so they could see who they were connected to and how they were connected.

We now identify for you if you are connected through a coworker, a reference account or through previous coworkers.

The result is that you can now look at the snapshot and have more intelligence about who you want to drill into further to help make the introduction or use as leverage to connect with your target.

Do you have questions about the latest InsideView Release? Leave us a comment or ask your question in the community Q&A section.

“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.”

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.

What is Gamification?

One of the trending topics in business is gamification. If you are not familiar with the term, in short, gamification is the application of game mechanics to non-game experiences that can drive an audience to a desired behavior.The size of the audience available through gaming is enormous and rivals television as a medium.

According to Forrester, gamers span just about every demographic.

• 65% of Xbox gamers are male
• 59% of “social gamers” (like Farmville…) are women
• 23% of the “social gamers” are Boomers between 45 and 65 years old.

In general gamers are also more motivated to have ‘connections’ with people than non-gamers. In the world of sales, connections and engagement is key to driving pipeline growth and creating new opportunities.

A few definitions of gamification:

• A game is structured play, usually for fun.
• Gameplay is interaction inside of a game.
• Game Mechanics are constructs or tactics commonly used in games to encourage gameplay. These are things like badges, points, leader boards, levels, challenges, achievements and virtual sheep you can put on your virtual farm.
• Game Dynamics are strategies commonly used in game design based on psychological motivations. These include things like “Appointments,” in which someone does something to gain a reward, “Avoidance,” in which someone does something to avoid a punishment, or the “Free Lunch” dynamic, in which people feel they are getting something because of their behavior.
• Currencies are ways to give people incentives based on various motivations in a digital world: the need for financial reward, the need to do good, the need to help one’s community, the need for recognition and influence, the need for pleasure. We can assign currencies to each one of these motivations to reward people for desired behaviors.

Gamification for Sales

Turning the sales process into a game is not a stretch of the imagination for companies. In may ways companies with B2B sales people have already added game mechanics into the process on a small scale. Glenngary Glen Ross has an amazing scene in the beginning of the movie where Alec Baldwin is addressing the sales team where is explains First Prize is a Cadillac and Second Prize is a set of steak knives. This is how most businesses gamify sales to date.

• Commission checks
• Presidents Club
• Spiffs

These are all typically based around revenue for a company and these game mechanics drive the behavior of the sales team to sell more. This is where most companies end the game process but that is about to change.

Companies like Xactly have developed an application that drives compensation management , most typically marketed to businesses that have become buried in spreadsheets trying to track sales teams and their commissions. That’s a big enough problem to tackle for companies but their application has some functionality that brings gamification to the sales teams directly. At a recent event I heard Xactly discuss how their customers base compensation and commissions on a series of behaviors that lean more ‘reward’ to the sales person if they do things such as close a deal early in the month or if they sales can close a deal within a specific time frame.

This opens up a lot doors into how companies could introduce game mechanics for sales even extending beyond revenue events.

Game On for B2B Sales

Research shows that financial rewards for gamers is only one incentive and not even the primary factor that people play games. We saw this internally at InsideView when we wanted to drive social media adoption by the company. The only game mechanic we had to put in place was a monthly email that highlighted to most active employees on Twitter. The internal competition to be in First Place drove up the number of updates from employees 312%.

Sales teams could, and I think should be incentivised for a number of activities outside of just revenue generation. True, the primary responsibility for sales teams is to close deals but within that process of selling there are a number of activities or tasks that can be measured and applied with game mechanics to drive even more productivity. Image a sales team that saw their work as a game and wanted to unlock as many achievements as possible to be recognized publicly and financially?

I hear more and more companies trying to add a layer of gamification to their sales processes. There are several ways to do this and the achievements and metrics are different depending on each companies desired goals.

• Number of calls
• New opportunities created
• Engagement on social media
• Discussions created in company communities
• Leads generated by online/personal social activities.

The list can go on forever. The truth is that they are almost limitless and all drive business metrics across different departments.

Is your company thinking of implementing gamification to sales or have any game mechanics that have been working so far?

V64 release features:

• Text-only alerts for Blackberry users
• Enhanced partner contact search
• Improved Twitter profile search
• Salesforce – Multiple contact sync
• Salesforce – Self-service field mapping for CRM administrators

V63 release features:
• Add a company on-demand
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook – Data Sync & Export
• NetSuite CRM – Partner intelligence
• Salesforce – Easy watchlist set-up

Do you have questions about the latest InsideView Release? Leave us a comment or ask your question in the community Q&A section.

Xactly Improves Sales Win Rate by 10%, Triples Lead Volume and Conversion Rate

InsideView, the social selling and sales intelligence leader, is proud to share the sales success story of customer Xactly Corporation, the leader in on-demand sales performance management. With InsideView, Xactly has dramatically increased its qualified lead volume and conversion rates, as well as improved its overall sales win rate by ten percent.

“We have been able to grow rapidly and increase market share, not only because of our highly differentiated product for incentive compensation, but also how we sell with InsideView,”

Prior to Xactly, organizations were constrained managing sales compensation on error-prone spreadsheets or with high-priced, on-premise solutions. Xactly established its market leadership by delivering a more cost-effective way for companies to easily manage sales commissions, while improving sales behavior and performance. Business has been strong for years, but the company wanted to take their sales performance to the next level, tightening all screws and treating each lead and prospect like gold.

By deploying InsideView across its entire sales force, Xactly sales reps now have immediate access to InsideView’s unique and integrated sales intelligence directly within Salesforce CRM. For every lead, prospect and existing customer, Xactly reps are able to get fresh and complete information, as well as real-time insights into everything from social media profiles, company news, financial information, competitive analysis and more. InsideView’s real-time application, including comprehensive up-to-the-minute sales alerts, allows Xactly’s reps to spend more time selling with the best information at their fingertips.

“We have been able to grow rapidly and increase market share, not only because of our highly differentiated product for incentive compensation, but also how we sell with InsideView,” said Steve De Marco, Vice President, Corporate Sales, Xactly Corporation. “With InsideView, our sales professionals are substantially better prepared for meetings than competitors because they understand their prospects’ unique business challenges and how to position our product as solutions for those challenges.”

“Even with a strong market position, Xactly was working to improve a common area in any sales organization: productivity,” said Ralf VonSosen, VP of Marketing at InsideView. “We are pleased to have had such a broad impact on their sales cycle — not only total lead volume, but the conversion of the leads and ultimately the company’s win rate. This is the power of integrated sales intelligence.”

InsideView significantly improved Xactly’s sales cycle by constantly monitoring and alerting reps of actionable items related to leads, prospects and existing customers.

It all comes back to the phone book

Just when you would think the explanation of data vs. intelligence was a moot point, a customer brought us another little anecdote that drives the nail in even further to the coffin of big data providers. Most startups and even larger businesses have a need to deliver leads to the sales team. This can be done using a combination of many marketing campaigns and targeting people that can benefit from your product or service. One of the normal go-to methods for companies is to inject a bunch of names into their CRM in a form of list building that gives the sales people a starting point of people to contact. Companies buy these lists because it’s better than handing a sales team a stack of yellow pages and telling them to start at A and work through Z. But is it really any better?

The problem with data as a launching point

Companies need data. List building has a place in the process but if that’s what you are relying on to drive a large volume of revenue for your company, you are going to be very disappointed. Using data as a launching point for your inside sales team to start working through is almost as bad as handing them a copy of the Yellow Pages for their territory with the industries they should focus on. Where do they start? What companies should they call first? Even with a more focused set of targets, sales people still have the same problems. Without some context or sales intelligence around the company or contact, sales people are still walking blind. Sure they’ll call 50 people and get 3 people that might be interested for a follow up but again, it’s a VERY grassroots process that belongs only in the history books.

What happens when you add a layer of actionable intelligence to the data? All of a sudden sales people are getting alerted to sales opportunities, they get fed information that they can pass onto their prospects and customers about trends and issues facing their competitors and how the prospect can benefit more from the service they offer. Sales intelligence has an explosive impact on driving revenue for a company.

The solution that builds revenue faster

When you hand a sales person a lead, it’s in their DNA to follow up on it with a call, email or some other communication. It will be hit or miss using the phonebook approach and they will move onto the next name on the list. We’ve documented case studies where customers are getting upwards of 70 new opportunities a month, per rep and watched sales efficiency increase dramatically by eliminating a large chunk of research a sales person needs to do. This will never be done by the Big Data vendors as much as they want you to believe it. Sales intelligence is the only solution.

This is the first mentions of Salesforce having Metallica as their featured performer at their annual Dreamforce 2011. Metallica known for songs like The Unforgiven, Master of Puppets, Fade to Black. I was skeptical about the news but the profile is owned by a Salesforce.com sales rep. Sure it could just be a rumor but coming from someone within the company adds some credibility to the update I would think.

There has been no official statement from the Salesforce or Dreamforce team on this news but I would suspect that will happen soon. They need to get on that before the entire world knows Metallica will be attending their massive conference before they say anything. It’s also really nice that Shakeel is willing to give out some passes. I’m sure he’s going to be the popular guy within the #DF11 group if that’s the case.

Twitter has been spreading the news about Metallica fairly quickly and most people are excited at the news. Are you more or less excited about Dreamforce now?

Update: Marcus Nelson the head of social media for the company passed along this reply to my request. hmmm…. I didn’t hear a “NOT True” in there. I bet we hear something by the end of the day.

Salesforce has officially responded which makes me think Metallica IS going to be the performer. Why else would they @metallica (hence getting their attention) if they were not planning on signing them or already have. Again. Still all rumor but this is all adding up to a Heavy Metal Dreamforce.

Thank you Marc for confirming the news!

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.”

InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence is an indispensible resource for sales organizations that want to efficiently know their prospects and customers. It increases sales productivity, reduces cost (no need to buy company information and prospect lists from multiple sources), and improves CRM user adoption. To learn more about InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence integrated with SAP CRM, please visit www.insideview.com/SAP.

The SAP Integration and Certification Center (SAP ICC) has certified that InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence 2.0 has achieved status as powered by the SAP NetWeaver technology platform as an add-on for the ABAP™ programming language 7.0 for SAP CRM 7.0. This deployment was tested and certified by the SAP ICC.

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.