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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
- 25 Influential Leaders In Sales
- How Science is Changing Sales As We Know It
- Why Cold Calling is the Bottom of the Barrel
- 40 Social Media B2B Infographics
- Gamification of the Sales Process
- 10 Reasons You Need a LinkedIn Profile
- 15 Posts on Why Cold Calling Is On Its Way Out the Door
- The History of Apple CEOs
- Bridging the Massive Social Media Gap Between Sales and Marketing
- Have No Fear: Why Sales Teams SHOULD Be On Social Media
- Creating a Sales Plan and Executing It.
- 10 of the Best Sales Sites
- The Death of Cold Calling – Ending the Debate
- 10 SlideShare Presentations That Will Make You a Better Salesperson
- Why Social Media is Important to the Sales Process.
- Top 10 Reasons for using Facebook for your Business
- 20 Awesome Sales Posts You Should Read
- 5 Great SlideShare Presentations on B2B Selling
- The Social Media Landscape – Facts and Figures for B2B Sales (Infographic)
- Should Sales People Be Blogging?
- The Problem with Big Data
- The Future of Social CRM
- Do You Listen to Your Customers?
- 10 tips for Driving Sales Productivity: Tip #1
- A Dip Into Sales Data vs. Sales Intelligence
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.
- How Entrepreneurs Can Increase Productivity by 500% -TechCrunch
- Top 5 Sales Strategies for 2012. Accelerate Your Momentum with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
- The Three Types of Team Commitment
- What’s Driving Your Customers Away?
- 8 Ways to Incentivize Employees to Use CRM
- Negative Assumptions Before Your Calls Usually Come True
- What’s Your Plan Once You’ve Connected Via A Social Network?
- The 10 Biggest Referral Mistakes Salespeople Make
- Anatomy Of A Lousy Sales Email
- One Marketing Guy Who Gets It (What Sales Needs, That Is)
- Why Sales Forecasts Are a Joke
- The Presentation Trap: Why Making Presentations Can Cost You the Sale
- 10 Tips that Separate the Good Sellers from the Great Ones
- Ignite More Sales with Sales Intelligence
- Determining What Metrics to Track with CRM
A study by the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carlina fond that 92% of prospects don’t take a meeting when cold-called or emailed by a sales rep. Our customers don’t report numbers this high but when looking at the bigger picture, we can understand why this is the case. Cold-calls are dead in the traditional sense. There are many reasons for this and a lot of supporting arguments to the death of cold calling but what we find is that many sales people still do not know how to call a prospect with relevant information that can make an impact and identify new opportunities. Harvard Business Review recently published a blog titled “The Worst Question a Salesperson Can Ask” and if you don’t know what is keeping your prospects up at night then you are not doing your job as a sales person. It’s that simple.
“Using competitive intelligence to sell more effectively is not a universal practice, but the Best-in-Class include it in their solution mix 36% more frequently than Industry Average companies, and 51% more than laggards”
If traditional sales and marketing methods no longer work, what do prospects respond to? How can sales and marketing reach, connect and engage with prospects effectively in today’s world?
The secrets to successful B2B sales and marketing are simple: Right Person. Right Time. Right Message.
Right Person: The first task is to identify the right person, find relevant information about them and connect with them through someone they know and respect. 84 percent of prospects usually respond to a sales rep when recommended by someone inside the company. Rather than calling a phone number from a list, identify an individual at the right level within the organization. This person should hold a position that gives them the authority to make a decision and makes them likely to have a need for the product or service. Be aware of the prospect’s work profile and recent tweets to easily establish a rapport, and know which colleague or reference customer can provide a warm introduction to the prospect.
Right Time: Know when to call a prospect. Picking up the phone right after a company secures funding, when a new executive has come on board, or when a new regulatory requirement comes into effect matters. Calling the prospect even days or weeks before a competitor does can be the difference between winning and losing a deal.
Right Message: Prospects take it in their own hands to go online to learn about vendor solutions, and they are often aware of the key features and big differences. As a result, they value reps that are more customer-focused and who can articulate how they can address the prospect’s unique business needs. The nuanced message should be about how to help a prospect be successful rather than what a product does.
A recent paper by Aberdeen titled “Understanding the Science of Sales Intelligence” identified the key areas that companies and sales teams should be focusing on for results.
- Executives/ People Information
- Targeted company details; Financials; Competitors
- Contextually relevant news
- Analyst data on tends
- User generated content (blogs, social media)
We are excited that we were included for the second year running to the Gartner Research Magic Quadrant for Social CRM. InsideView is the only company in the Magic Quadrant specifically addressing the sales processes, intelligent monitoring, outreach and collaboration for sales professionals. This is only the second time that Gartner Research has addressed the growing market of Social CRM (sCRM).
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In the report’s introduction, Gartner analysts mandate measurable benefits of any social CRM vendor included in the Magic Quadrant. InsideView’s integrated, seamless sales intelligence has been shown by analyst firm Aberdeen Research to improve top-line revenue by more than ten percent.
“While others focused on one-to-many marketing and service areas, we have focused on the one-to-one relationships critical for sales,”
“InsideView distinguishes itself as one of the few vendors in social CRM focused on sales processes,” reads the Gartner report, available for purchase here. The report continues, “With an emphasis on usability, InsideView has promoted a compelling vision for applying search and relationship mining technologies to aid salespeople with key informational needs around sourcing contacts and leads, as well as monitoring business events and personnel within accounts.” Ease-of-use is also praised: “…easy to set up and personalize to specific needs (i.e., list building, lead generation, lead qualification, precall research in prospecting, account research, etc.).”
The report also highlights InsideView’s ability to uncover new sales opportunities and relationships, as well as to provide real-time intelligence and social information on leads and prospects through its unique Buzz Tab. One new area of emphasis by InsideView is the establishment of broader community: just last month, InsideView launched a Lithium-powered community for its nearly 100,000 users.
“While others focused on one-to-many marketing and service areas, we have focused on the one-to-one relationships critical for sales,” said Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView. “It’s great to see the industry analysts agree on the importance of these one-to-one relationships. We are now expanding more into the areas of marketing and service as these recognize the need for deeper relationships. Look for some exciting announcements about our offering soon.”
One of the most important rules of sales is to listen to your customers. As a sales person if you are doing all of the talking, your customer is probably going to fall asleep on the other end of the phone. The same is true when giving presentations, you have to make it entertaining if not interactive so you can keep the audiences attention. You want your customers attention, you want them to be engaged with you wherever they are in the process.
Anthropologist’s View on Listening
Recently, Chris Bailey published a post called Listening to What Isn’t Said. Chris is an anthropologist who works in customer experience design and his post is definitely worth reading.
In his post, he gives us five simple ways to listen to what is not said.
- Shut Up
- Be Naive
- Get Curious
- Show Me
- Record It
But listening to your customers on the phone or in person is only part of the conversation you should pay attention to. A sales person should be listening to everything around your customer as well as their company and there are a few ways to do this.
Set up your InsideView Watchlists. Why go searching for trigger events and news about your customers when you can get a custom email sent to you every day. This is a pretty comprehensive list of news around the companies you are tracking covering leadership changes, acquisitions, lawsuits, and executives that show up in the news.
Another practice you should follow for you customers is to setup a search specific to them on social media networks. Does their company have a Twitter profile? Big announcements and other company news will be shared through the corporate Twitter profile that you might want to be aware of. You can always go the next step and follow your cusotmers personal Twitter feeds also. You can do this by setting up a list in Twitter and making it private if needed so you can see what the people from inside the company are saying. Sometimes this is a great way to get introduced to others in the company or see what you contact is interested in outside of work. InsideView has a list specific for employees that anyone can follow or read.
Paying attention to your customers and listening to them on and offline can give you better insights to what matters most to them and gives you multiple ways to engage with them and build stronger relationships.
How are you listening to your customers? What tools or applications do you recommended?
Business Insights, Contacts and News Immediately at Fingertips of Users of SAP CRM 7.0
InsideView, a sales intelligence leader, today announced its InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence 2.0 solution is now SAP-certified for integration with the SAP® Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application 7.0, earning “Powered by SAP NetWeaver®” certification status.
Through the integration of InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence with SAP CRM 7.0, users now have access to complete and relevant intelligence on millions of companies and decision-maker contacts worldwide, directly inside the platform. Users can spend more time selling and less time researching their prospects and customers. InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence dramatically improves sales performance by bringing together traditional business information from the world’s leading sources, breaking news and social intelligence about companies and contacts into a single window within SAP CRM 7.0. The “all-in-one” sales intelligence makes it fast and easy to discover prospects, qualify leads, engage decision makers, close deals, and grow customer relationships and top-line revenue.
InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence also incorporates all major social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs for easy access to warm connections and real-time insight about customers and prospects. Sales intelligence has been shown to increase revenue per sales person by more than 10 percent, compared to sales people who only have access to simple contact or company data.
“We are excited to deliver certified integration between InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence and SAP CRM 7.0, bringing rich business insight, alerts and actionable social media to customers,” said Heidi Tucker, Vice President, Global Alliances, InsideView. “The solution now integrated with SAP CRM delivers valuable functionality to empower 21st century sales warriors to achieve competitive edge.”
SugarCRM Users To Have Seamless Access to InsideView for Social Selling
InsideView, the social selling and sales intelligence leader, and SugarCRM, the world’s fastest growing customer relationship management (CRM) company, announced today that InsideView’s powerful sales intelligence solution will come preinstalled in all editions of SugarCRM. The integrated solution will provide all of SugarCRM’s users with immediate access to InsideView’s state-of-the-art sales intelligence at no incremental cost. The announcement was made at the annual SugarCon customer and developer’s conference.
The partnership comes at a time when sales people are overwhelmed with an explosion of data that leaves them spending more time searching for information and less time selling. InsideView’s sales intelligence dramatically improves sales performance by aggregating the most valuable sources of external information sales people need about companies and contacts into a single, easy-to-access view within SugarCRM. This sales intelligence makes it fast and easy to discover prospects, qualify leads, engage decision-makers, close deals, and grow both customer relationships and top-line revenue.
Sales intelligence has been shown to increase revenue per sales person by more than ten percent, compared to sales people who only have access to simple contact or company data. InsideView’s platform aggregates and draws relevance from the huge quantity of business information available in tens of thousands of worldwide business publications; social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs; and financial and contact information.
InsideView CEO Umberto Milletti’s participation in a keynote address at SugarCon – SugarCRM’s marquee global user group event – highlights the importance and urgency of social selling and sales intelligence for today’s sales professionals.
“Sales professionals using SugarCRM need to be able to create effective and actionable information from the massive amounts of data presented to them at any given time,” said Clint Oram, CTO at SugarCRM. “With this partnership, InsideView brings meaningful business insight for millions of companies worldwide directly into our easy-to-use platform. With this integration, any user’s view of his or her leads, accounts, contacts and opportunities will include real-time, relevant social and business insights and triggers.”
“We are excited to partner with SugarCRM to empower all SugarCRM customers and partners with automatic access to rich insight about millions of companies and key decision-makers around the world,” said Heidi Tucker, VP Global Alliances at InsideView. “Combined with SugarCRM’s ‘single system of truth’ and collaborative platform, “InsideView will help SugarCRM users find more relevant ways to connect with their prospects and customers to understand their important business issues. “
Building off the existing integration between Sugar and SalesView, the sales intelligence solution from InsideView, the companies are announcing a combined social CRM and sales intelligence solution. The latest edition of Sugar 6 will include SalesView pre-loaded into the system. This offers users the ability to tap into thousands of global data sources, as well as the vast universe of social media to gain relevant and actionable insight into their prospects and customers.
“A CRM system is only as good as the data inside of it,” said Umberto Milletti. “By accessing real-time sales intelligence and relevant social information within Sugar 6, users can discover prospects, qualify leads, engage decision-makers, close deals and grow customer relationships more quickly. SalesView and Sugar together form the building blocks of a winning social CRM strategy for any business.
SugarCRM is the first major CRM platform to ship with InsideView’s sales intelligence built right in. SugarCRM Cloud edition users will see InsideView immediately when accessing the newest SugarCRM version. All users of SugarCRM’s on-premise edition may download InsideView from SugarExchange or upgrade to the latest release of SugarCRM. To learn more about InsideView and how sales intelligence can dramatically improve your sales cycle, please visit www.insideview.com/SUGARCRM. Read the rest of this entry »
SugarCon ’11, SugarCRM’s fifth annual user & customer conference, brings together SugarCRM users, developers, partners and experts from around the world. Packed with two days of business, technical and product presentations, SugarCon provides practical knowledge that you can apply to improve your company’s performance.
InsideView has the good fortune to have multiple sessions at SugarCon 2011 where we will have the opportunity to cover a great deal of content. Starting off with a Keynote address from Umberto Milletti and then two separate breakout sessions with Inbound Marketing Manager and Social Selling Director Koka Sexton along with the VP of Marketing Ralf VonSosen.
Big Data and the Emergence of Social Selling with Umberto Milletti, Founder and CEO, InsideView
Ballroom
Keynotes | Tuesday, April 5, 2011 | 1:15 – 2:00
As more businesses transact online and millions of users including executives and consumers use social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs, there’s an overwhelming amount of data, also known as “Big Data”, on companies and contacts online.
This data deluge presents new challenges as well as big opportunities, especially for sales organizations, to distill actionable insights about prospects and transform selling from an art to science. Harnessing business and social intelligence about prospects will no longer be optional, but essential for increasing sales productivity and win rates.
Learn about why Big Data matters and how it can help you change the game of selling.
Session #1
Getting a Competitive Advantage through Social Selling with Ralf VonSosen and Koka Sexton
Track 4: The Sugar Exchange | Tuesday, April 5, 2011 | 2:00 – 2:40
Today’s customers are not very responsive to traditional sales and marketing tactics such as email blasts, cold-calls, and canned pitches. Using social media, customers are researching products and solutions, and talking to their peers for recommendations instead of listening to vendor pitches. Over 70% of the buyer’s journey is complete before it gets to sales.
Most sales reps and sales organizations are overwhelmed by too much data and frustrated by the loss of productivity as they seek actionable sales intelligence about their prospects! Harnessing business and social insights about prospects from online data can be a game-changer and a productivity booster for sales teams.
Come to this session to learn about how you make your selling more of a competitive advantage, what you need to have in place, and how you can get started.
Session #2
5 Must-Haves For Boosting Sales With Social Media with Ralf VonSosen and Koka Sexton
Track 6: Social Business | Wednesday, April 6th | 11:30am – 12:10pm
Your customers have changed. How you find them and engage with them has changed too. It’s more important than ever for sales organizations to recognize this opportunity to build relationships and generate new leads using social media. The problem is what tools to use, metrics to track and how to train them.
In this session, you will learn about the 5 easy steps you should take, that will empower a sales team to engage with customers in social networks. You will also learn what tools work best and how to measure the results.
