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After tremendous growth in the US, InsideView, the leader in sales intelligence and social selling, announced today the beginning of its global expansion beginning with its InsideView UK and Ireland Edition. Thousands of US companies now deploy InsideView’s award-winning company and people intelligence to increase the productivity of their customer-facing employees, improving metrics across the customer cycle, including lead conversion, win rates and customer retention and expansion.
With the UK and Ireland Edition, InsideView takes this competitive advantage worldwide, providing professionals with effective intelligence that helps them be more targeted, relevant and timely in their sales and customer management efforts. The UK and Ireland Edition of InsideView will be generally available in Q1, as a stand-alone application as well as a mash-up within market-leading CRM applications including Microsoft Dynamics, Netsuite, Oracle CRM On Demand, Salesforce.com, SAP, and SugarCRM.
“There is a worldwide demand for more intelligent ways of doing business, nowhere is this more true than in marketing, sales, and service. Our expansion today is part of our commitment to bring professionals around the globe the kind of intelligence that drives productivity, relevance and revenue.” – Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView.
Global Demand for InsideView’s Sales Intelligence
InsideView is seeing huge demand from companies selling to UK and Ireland-based businesses, where over 45% of the population is active on social media including Facebook and LinkedIn, making it the second largest market in the world for new solutions that can drive ROI from social media.
Sales Intelligence has become an imperative as the deluge of data, the changing buying process, and new social media dynamics have surfaced in customer processes. InsideView provides professionals with the most relevant information about customers and prospects, and alerts them on the best time for outreach. This intelligence results in highly effective, productive and lucrative customer-facing employees: In fact, companies that employ InsideView’s style of intelligence see a ten percent improvement in top-line revenue.
Sales Intelligence Tailor Made for the UK and Ireland
Thousands of users are already using InsideView for targeting UK and Ireland, and with this launch they and other customers will have access to deeper and tailor-made sales intelligence . InsideView gathers and analyzes tens of thousands of information sources, filters what matters, and delivers the intelligence directly into all of the market-leading CRM solutions, resulting in more effective sales and even improved CRM engagement.
For its UK and Ireland Edition, InsideView is partnering with top global and local providers of business information, as well as gathering and analyzing information from all major online news publications, user-generated, and social media sources specific to UK and Ireland.
InsideView is also teaming with leading CRM system integrators including Outsourcery, Ciber, Alfapeople, ConsultCRM, The CRM Business and No Blue to bring its intelligence to relevant CRM platforms in the UK and Ireland. ConsultCRM, one of the UK’s leading Microsoft Gold Partners specializing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, is delighted to be partnering with InsideView in its go-to-market expansion.
“Our clients are constantly under pressure to maximize the value from their Microsoft CRM deployment. InsideView adds immediate value because it offers ready-integrated real-time company intelligence, contact data, news, tailored alerts and even social media,” said John Pearson, Sales Director at ConsultCRM. “We are excited to be working with an offering that truly answers the ‘What’s in it for me?’ question for CRM users in sales and account management.”
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.
Veteran CRM and Cloud Technology Executive Joins to Expand Sales Intelligence Leadership and Growth
InsideView, the social selling and sales intelligence leader, today announced that Ralf VonSosen has been named vice president of marketing to drive InsideView’s expansion and growth, and to bring InsideView’s sales intelligence to the more than ten million B2B sales professionals across the globe. VonSosen’s responsibilities include branding, corporate communications, demand generation, product marketing strategies, and marketing operations.
The news comes on the heels of InsideView’s $12 million Series C funding round and next stage of acceleration of worldwide distribution, as well as the recent launch of Social Selling University. Social Selling University educates sales professionals on how to leverage social media technologies and methodologies to increase sales productivity and drive revenue throughout the entire sales cycle.
“As a seasoned CRM and technology executive, Ralf brings valuable insight to InsideView’s product and brand positioning. He is an integral part of our leadership team,” said InsideView CEO Umberto Milletti. “Ralf will help us take our company and product from its current place as a visionary go-to leader to our next chapter as a ubiquitous sales productivity tool among the millions of sales professionals looking to incorporate social selling and sales intelligence into their work.”
VonSosen brings nearly two decades of CRM and Cloud technology marketing, strategy and corporate development expertise to InsideView. He most recently spent five years as VP of marketing — leading fast-growing eCommerce start-up marketing strategies – most recently at MarketLive and previously Infopia, where he helped build each company’s brand, develop their partner ecosystems, expand revenue generation and drive product innovations. Prior to that, he played a fundamental role in launching the first SAP CRM on-demand solution as VP of solutions marketing at SAP. In the late nineties, VonSosen built Siebel’s communications and energy CRM industry solutions as director of product marketing.
“In our current world’s mandate of working smarter and faster with real-time data, InsideView is leading the charge in a market thirsty for innovation: sales and CRM,” said VonSosen. “InsideView is the only company in the market that provides a solution to the overwhelming amount of data available about prospects and customers. I’m excited to be a part of a team that’s changing an entire industry by allowing professionals to spend more time selling, and less time dealing with the burden of information overload.”
Connect with VonSosen and follow the InsideView marketing story on LinkedIn.
Social Selling University has continued to grow in numbers. After a great launch of the program at the beginning of this month with an All-Star series of webinars focused on leveraging social media for sales. We have also started building a community of sales 2.0 professionals interested in learning more about building a pipeline of new opportunities through social networks.
With an increased focus on enablement through sales intelligence, we are planning on more product enhancements and training. We are leading the conversation for sales people or why social media is important to the sales process.
Recent Social Selling Webinars
Social Calling – Integrating the Who, What & When of Prospecting <~~ WebEx Link
Is your calendar chock-full of meetings with well-qualified prospects? Is cold calling working great for you? Are you having a ball making cold calls? If you answered “no” to any of these questions, you may want to attend this webinar.
You’re now dealing with a super-frazzled and super-distracted “Customer 2.0″. The volume cold call is as “dead as a dodo” when dealing with “Customer 2.0”. But smart prospecting is very much alive.
What you will learn
- Why the cold call is dead if it means “smiling and dialing”
- How to use the Who, What & When of prospecting to maximize your chances of getting into your prospect’s office
- How you can use Sales 2.0 tools and techniques to increase your cold calling results dramatically, causing an approximately an 8 x improvement.
- Some of the key Sales 2.0 tools for prospecting and how to use them.
Driving Sales Productivity with Social Intelligence <~~ WebEx Link
Engaging today’s socially-savvy customer requires a lot more than a grasp of the basic facts and figures about their companies. It requires relevance at the time of engagement. Sales reps need a 360 degree view into their prospects that incorporates recent business events, social conversations and social relationships – in other words social intelligence.
In this webinar, you will learn:
- What exactly is social intelligence
- Why social intelligence trumps sales data in driving sales productivity
- How to leverage social intelligence to engage the right prospects at the right time with the right message
- Why leveraging social intelligence is absolutely critical to your sales success today
Social Selling for Executives: What the Management Team Needs to Know to Succeed with Today’s Customers <~~ WebEx Link
Are you a top executive in sales and marketing wondering how a social media strategy fits in your business? Or are you a sales or marketing professional who wants to discuss the benefits of social selling with your manager, an executive team or board of directors? Listen in as Anneke Seley presents data, metrics and customer case stories to illustrate:
- Why and when you should include social media in your selling strategy
- How companies large and small are using social selling
- How you can get started with social selling
Finding people that you can bring into the sales funnel is easier when you can tap into their social media streams. Prospects are online everyday asking questions and looking for solutions to solve their business issues. The problem facing most sales teams is a lack of understanding on the impact social selling can have on their efforts.
Social Selling University is continuing to build a foundation of content for sales people and sales executives to explain the results that can be achieved by incorporating basic social selling strategies. The first set of webinars focus on the use of social media and how sales teams can leverage social networks to increase lead generation.
Social Selling Webinars
Your Customer Has Moved. Do You Know Where? <~~ WebEx Link
Sales and marketing approaches have been flipped upside down with the explosion of social media. What worked 3 years ago, doesn’t work now. Social media has brought with it a profound global shift in communications that favors relationships over contacts, eliminates cold calling, and puts the buyer in control of the sales process. Capitalize on some simple, but practical “how to” ideas for engaging buyers and customers in a digital economy. During this session we will discuss:
• Why bother? A look at the numbers
• Evolution of sales and how social media applies
• Benefits of social selling
• Creating value in advance of the sales opportunity
• What executives want you to know
• Building loyalty and retention
• How to use social media for lead generation
• Lead generation from current networks
Social Selling with LinkedIn and Twitter <~~ WebEx Link
When sales organizations try to leverage social media into their sales processes, they are often overwhelmed by too much information and underwhelmed by its impact on productivity.
• A quick primer on social media
• Why you need to use social media for your B2B sales organization
• How you can get started
• Tools and Techniques that you need to know
Selling to Crazy Busy People <~~ WebEx Link
Having a tough time capturing and keeping the attention of today’s stressed-out decision makers? In this webinar, you’ll learn:
•How being crazy-busy impacts your prospects’ thinking, decision making and expectations.
•Three critical mistakes that will kill your chances of setting up a meeting with a potential customer.
•The four key factors your prospects use to determine if they’ll continue the conversation with you — or not.
•Why leveraging social media is absolutely critical to your sales success today.
For a complete list of Social Selling University Webinars go here.
Closing more opportunities is the goal of any B2B sales organization. Fill the funnel and work the leads through a cycle that ultimately brings in revenue. None of this is possible in B2B sales without having conversations with the prospects and other stake holders.
The challenge that most sales people are having is that decision makers are crazy busy and even though they decide to download you application or grab a paper of your website, this doesn’t do much more than fill the top of the funnel with a ton of people that you can email or call to follow up with. Data from a new lead does very little to provide insights on what the person or company they represent is currently facing that could open up a conversation. This is why sales intelligence is so valuable.
What’s holding sales people back?
When it comes to doing pre-call research and getting some background on a prospect or company you are calling into, there is a lot of information gathered by just doing a Google search. The problem with this is there is very little context around the results. You can spend an hour digging through search results and other resources to get an idea of who the person is and what challenges their company is facing but you’re busy too and can’t justify a large amount of time to research to make a call that may only take 10-15 minutes. “Typically, there is a lot of knowledge out there,” says John Aiello, CEO of SAVO, in a video interview with Selling Power magazine publisher Gerhard Gschwandtner. “The gap is that people can’t find it.”
Sales Intelligence Drives the Conversation
Having relevant information fed to a sales team on their prospects has proven to increase sales win rates.
As a sales person, there is no excuse any more for not knowing more about your prospects and the company you are calling into. Sales Intelligence tools enable you to have relevant information at your virtual fingertips that can be used to know in many cases exactly how to position your product or service. There are even free sales intelligence tools available that can help.
Sales people need intelligence to close more deals. Making that intelligence available in a way that sales can capture quickly and easy to find is a necessity. In an Accenture study of more than 1,000 managers in the United States and the United Kingdom, nearly 60 percent have to go to numerous sources to compile the information they need to do their jobs well. About the same number reported that information as poorly distributed across the organization.
Building your sales pipeline and increasing win rates is not magic. There is no secret code that needs to be cracked for success. All you need is more information and a better way of identifying what matters when you start making connections.
Companies across the world are agreeing that social media is changing the landscape of how customers interact with brands. Airlines use social media tools like Twitter to stay on top of customer service needs, companies use social media as a marketing tool to stay engaged with customers. The growing popularity of sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have become a breeding ground for conversations.
Sales Teams Need Social Media
What is rarely talked about it the need for sales teams to be active on Twitter and other social networks like LinkedIn. On a base level, sales people need to be aware that social media and social selling can have a measurable impact on their win rates. CSO Insights recently published a paper called “The Sales Intelligence Challenge” that addressed this. InsideView was involved in a Webinar with CSO Insights on this topic also. It was found in their research that B2B Sales win rates were highest when sales people used sales intelligence tools like InsideView.
Social Media is the Key
There is too much information available online these days that a sales person is walking blind if they are not using it in some way. Sales prospecting lists for contact data is fine but it’s not very effective on a large scale. Gathering contact information is only the first step in an effective sales process. The real intelligence comes from contact data and the relevant information about that contact.
Most times this means that sales people are opening up several tabs in their browser to run searches in LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs and Google to see what they can find on their contact so a phone call or other engagement can seem timely and be well received from the prospect. Knowing more about your prospect, their company and industry is NOT provided by contact data or prospect lists.
The best sales professionals are gathering recent news and relevant information about prospects and companies by looking at social media for the sales intelligence needed to drive the conversation.
InsideView Launches Social Selling University to Provide Comprehensive Education for Sales Professionals, Driving Sales Productivity Through Social MediaWorld’s Top Sales Experts, Social Media Pundits Unite for Launch of First-of-Its-Kind Education Initiative
Today Social Selling University officially launches as the first program to educate sales professionals on how to leverage social media technologies and methodologies to increase sales productivity and drive revenue throughout the entire sales cycle. The first-of-its-kind program instructs sales organizations, consultants and in-house teams about selling to the modern and socially-connected customer — Customer 2.0 — and offers both an on-demand curriculum and live workshops. The program is open to all sales professionals starting today.
Social Selling University’s (SSU) actionable content and interactive learning modules have been developed by expert instructors, including experienced thought leaders, authors and analysts. Classes are designed for all levels of sales professionals, covering a broad range of topics including entry-level social media instruction on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, best practices for managing personal online brands and how to accelerate the sales cycle by leveraging recent business events, social conversations and social relationships (aka “social intelligence”). The program’s instructors will provide expert advice to sales management on how to best incorporate social selling into their organizations, and educate sales professionals on how to utilize social media platforms to drive greater sales productivity.
“Social media is fundamentally changing the way sales professionals navigate the sales cycle — what worked two years ago, doesn’t work anymore because socially savvy buyers know far more about products and companies than ever before,” said Barbara Giamanco, Talent Builders CEO. “Fortunately, SSU levels the playing field by teaching sales executives, managers and reps how to interact with and sell to the modern consumer. These social sales practices breed relationships and eliminate the need for cold calling.”
Who should attend SSU?
Any sales professional — from account rep to sales team leader, director or executive — who CANNOT answer the question: “What is social selling and why does it matter to my sales organization?”
Isn’t social media for marketers? Why does social media matter to sales people?
- Social media marketing grew 50% in 2010 to $1.2 billion, and analysts predict that 2011 is the “year of social integration” for businesses. Social CRM has crested as the new and understood platform for sales and customer service.
“Salespeople who fail to leverage social media do so at their own peril. The problem is, many don’t know how,” said Jill Konrath, best-selling author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies. “Thankfully, technologies exist to allow any sales professional to gather and share relevant buyer information and achieve greater sales success. Social Selling University is a great place to start and continue learning what’s possible in the new world of social selling.”
As part of the initiative, SSU will host a Webinar series, featuring a panel of industry thought leaders to answer questions about how to use social media for sales, including:
March 3: Barbara Giamanco, founder and CEO of Talent Builders, Inc
March 8: Koka Sexton, director of Social Selling University
March 10: Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies
March 15: Patrick O’Malley, social media trainer and consultant
March 17: Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0
March 22: Pelin Thorogood, principal, Schulman + Thorogood Group.
March 24: Anneke Seley, CEO and founder of Phone Works and coauthor of Sales 2.0
March 29: Dan Schawbel, managing partner of Millennial Branding, LLC
March 31: Tibor Shanto, principal, Renbor Sales Solutions
On March 8, SSU will host a live, complimentary workshop following the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, where industry thought leaders will discuss the best practices for leveraging social media to increase sales team performance. Visit SSU’s registration page for more information about the agenda, speakers or sign-up information.
“Social media has completely changed the world of selling, and if you and your organization want to stay relevant, then you need to learn how to use these tools before your competitors,” said Dan Schawbel, the author of the number one international bestselling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future. ”Social Selling University is the first program to teach salespeople how to use Facebook, Twitter and other social tools to generate ready-to-buy leads and build relationships with customers that result in long-term business growth.”
About Social Selling University
Social Selling University is the world’s first initiative dedicated to teaching the sales profession how to put social media to work within their sales processes and organizations for greater productivity and revenue, through online instruction and in-person workshops. SSU staff includes dozens of the leading experts in social media, sales and Social CRM, and provides courses made specifically for executives, managers and representatives. Founded in 2011 by InsideView, SSU is the leading source of education about using the social Web to increase sales productivity through social intelligence. For more information, visit www.socialsellingu.com.
Social media has become a defacto marketing tool for any organization, but it’s incredible how scared sales managers and teams still are of letting their sales reps join the sales 2.0 party. But the reality is, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself…oh, and not closing more and larger deals faster than ever before.
Social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn (as well as the entire blogosophere) are target-rich environments to find new opportunities and leads, and engage with prospects in a powerful and effectively intelligent new way. So what is holding companies back? Of the dozen or so objections I have heard, my conclusion is: FEAR. Fear that their sales team will not produce results, fear that the sales team will waste their time online and fear that their sales teams will do or say something online that will tarnish their brand and kill sales. The fact of the matter is, NOT letting sales professionals engage on social media is detrimental to the bottom line for the reasons below.
In addition, it always surprises me when a company pushes off any new technology based on such fear, and masks it with an excuse. Businesses that embrace innovation and new tools have a great track record of becoming leaders in their spaces. Social media is no different as it applies to sales professionals. There are very simple reasons that all of these excuses should be thrown away and sales people given a green light to social media engagement with leads and prospects.
Fact: Social selling produces results
Sirius Decisions Inc. recently said in a webinar that in most sales cycles, customers are now in control. Customers are doing 70 percent of the research online that drives the buying decisions, and then contacting a specific vendor for the purchase. The old concept of customers calling into a company to be ‘sold’ something is quickly vanishing. Since more of the buying process is happening online in discussion groups and social networks, sales people that are paying attention and, in most cases, are already a member of these networks like Twitter, will capitalize on these conversations and identify new opportunities much earlier than those without such social involvement.
Myth: Social Selling is not a time-suck
If your sales team is wasting their time online or talking to friends on the phone most of the day, stop now and reevaluate your employees. If you have talented and hard working people on your sales team, then you shouldn’t expect them to behave any different with using social media throughout the sales cycle. If your sales team is already using Twitter or other networks for personal use, they will be able to adopt a sales methodology around the same tools to produce revenue.
Myth: ‘Social Selling’ is too risky
This is an objection that comes up more often than any other, and it’s a common misunderstanding that a business can be destroyed in the matter of one status update or blog post. But, I don’t agree with this any more than I would with the idea that a poorly sent email to a customer can do the same. There was a point in time where sales people didn’t have access to email for that exact reason, but can you imagine not having email as a tool? The same will be said about social media tools in 10 years – those who embrace it will be in the drivers seat, and ultimately win out.
It all comes down to “letting go” and enabling your sales teams to be more effective. Social Selling is not fit for every sales person, but I’d bet you have a strong percentage of your sales team that would welcome the opportunity to drive opportunities through social tools in addition to traditional phone and email tactics.
This post originally appeared on Sales2.com where InsideView has regular contributions. Sales 2.0 is a site dedicated to the improvement of sales results.
