Lead conversion in the B2B sector is a long, complex process. As per a recent report by a B2B magazine, more than 40% of B2B marketers have said that their sales cycle has paced down in the past few years.
This directly impacts sales. It is obvious if the sale cycle is slow, it will lead to slow turnovers, in turn, slow growth.
In this digital era, what companies need is the right sales tools and precise information about their prospects to keep their sales pipeline engaged with leads throughout the year. The era of cold calling and buying long lists of generic contact information is over.
Most organizations employ inbound marketing to get information about their leads. That is not enough. If you want to stay ahead of your peers in business, you need to put efforts in marketing.
Knowing your customers is not enough, you should understand what exactly they are looking for, there pain points, their needs, and what is their buying behavior?
Now, how do you cover all these aspects as a sales professional- by employing sales intelligence!
What exactly is sales intelligence?
Sales intelligence isn’t something related to martech or database vendors. It isn’t about a list of leads you have ready to make sales with you. It is instead a combination of a list of your potential customers and information you have about them, like,
1. Which sector do they belong to?
2. What is their company size and structure?
3. What are their annual turnover and economic performance?
4. Who are their partners, suppliers, and customers?
5. The digital presence and the stakeholders involved
You can put in many more details here. Every information that helps you understand your customers and make better sales comes under sales intelligence.
How does sales intelligence help a B2B sales professional?
If put in simple words, it equips a salesperson with precise information about their customers. It helps them do better conversions as having information helps them educate their leads, nurture them, and understand if they have any additional needs. Also, having information helps in identifying opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.
Most of this information is acquired during the marketing phase. The reason being sales intelligence boosts your analytics, and its main power lies in helping sales professional do intelligent decision making when the time is right enhancing the company’s overall growth.
How does sales intelligence function?
There are more than 5000 marketing tools available in the market, and all of them have one single purpose- to help you increase your leads- In terms of quality and quantity.
The quantity of leads is achieved by being proactive for lead information and looking out for new sources of lead generation. Quality of leads is ensured by proper segmentation employing data profiling and suggesting follow-up actions.
Sales intelligence tool should deal with the 3 P’s: –
- Providing intelligence about genuine prospects
- Prioritizing follow up actions
- Present the interests of prospects to the salesperson
Altogether, sales intelligence is about using the available information in the smartest way possible to get the sales done.
What are the four benefits of sales intelligence?
We have discussed what sales intelligence is, how it works, now let’s understand the four benefits of sales intelligence:
1. Sales cycle becomes more compact- Many a time, sales cycle becomes longer because the salesperson is targeting the wrong prospects, or they push for sales in the initial stages of the buying process. So, it is not the customers who create long sales cycles. Sales professionals are the ones responsible for it. By leveraging sales intelligence, sales professionals could identify the right prospects who could buy from them and fasten the decision-making process. This itself would reduce the time of lead conversions.
2. Better sales strategies- Better information can help create better strategies. When you have relevant information about your prospects, you can use it to draft better strategies for lead conversions, better turnover, and engagement.
3. More productivity- Sales team can leverage sales intelligence to automate follow-ups on various leads depending on their value and quality. Earlier, sales professionals wasted their time on manual processes. Not only it consumes energy, but a lot of time and efforts go in vain following up unqualified leads.
4. Better conversations- You all must have once in your life felt embarrassed talking to a seller who had no idea of your needs. Most sales professionals with minimal idea of the prospect will keep talking about their products and services rather than the preferences of the customer, their aspirations, and pain points. Employing sales intelligence would prevent sales professionals from making this mistake. It will help them have meaningful conversations with their prospects increasing the chances of lead conversion.
If you are a B2B organization, you must employ sales intelligence in your sales process. Changes in the existing system are difficult to initiate but if you want to make your sales professionals more efficient, get more leads, and do more sales, – employing sales intelligence is the way to go.
