For sales people, the surge of convenient technology is a very recent development. Two decades after the CRM is introduced, sales intelligence is still not that widely adopted concept. No matter how skilled your workforce is, it’s very hard to close sales, nurture leads and move the prospects along the sales funnel without having meaningful information about them.
Identifying the right prospects is one of the most neglected steps in process of selling a product or service. You may think you’ve got the personas pinned-down but without the application of data and analytics to back it up, you’re way off the mark. Being stuck in such a position can reduce productivity. In such a cold sticky situation, there is a strong need to invest in a sales intelligence system.
Understanding sales intelligence
Sales intelligence is the array of technologies, practices, and applications that allow the display, integration, evaluation, collation, and analysis of prospect data from various sources.
Sales intelligence equips organizations with appropriate information and better insights into who their campaigns are reaching, the prospects they are pitching, and, from there, come up with resolutions and improvements that will result in better performance of sales teams.
How does sales intelligence fit in?
Sales intelligence aids and functions closely with the CRM software. Incorporating the aspects of competitive intelligence, market research, and market intelligence, a sales intelligence system helps sales teams by providing them meaningful information about the prospects.
Some of the information that a Sales intelligence system provides include- Company size, structure, industry, turnover, financial performance, Company associations, Digital presence, etc. Such intricate information helps the sales team to target their prospects better and step up on their game of lead conversion by engaging in precise sales pitches.
Powering up Sales Intelligence with personalized content
Personalized content can improve the performance of sales teams by leveraging the content provided by content marketers. Content marketers within an organization need to use sales intelligence gathered from sales operations to create content that will provide useful information for prospecting and pitching. This way they create content that reflects the views of customers. Therefore, they boost sales the performance of the sales team by making content that addresses sales needs.
When sales intelligence is boosted, marketers can sit at ease that their content has reached the right people, at the right places, at the right time. When an organization has an imperative content marketing strategy in place, the content moves along the sales process. Fewer leads are wasted, and lesser leads exit the sales pipeline.
After conversion, the sales process does not end. There is an opportunity to spark more buying activity in customers in the form of cross-sales and up-sales. This works when customized content is served to them right when they require it. Customers’ queries are addressed and recognized, leading sales teams to extend the right services that meet their requirements.
Understanding not only companies but also people
The importance of doing your homework on every company you are pitching to should not be underestimated, but, it’s also important to remember, that in the end must be able to influence the individuals within these companies.
Most sales intelligence platforms for B2B sales specialists focus on producing enhanced company data rather than data about people within these accounts, so-called intent data. Intent data is behavioral information accumulated about an individual’s activities, combining both the data about a person’s interest areas as well as the data about who the person is. This can help you learn why he or she is expressing interest in a particular topic.
Sales intelligence helps in cutting down the struggle hours of the sales team, so they spend less time researching or tracking the prospect’s data. The prime objective is better sales lead identification and going further lead nurturing for the overall sales cycle.
Sales intelligence places the sales teams in the most desirable position to win. According to a survey conducted by CSO Insights, only 9.7% of companies provide sales representatives with sales intelligence information, whereas 90.3% admitted that there’s a level of effort required from the side of salespeople to have access to sales intelligence.
The number of organizations that don’t assist salespeople in terms of preparing them, to build meaningful conversations with prospects, is appalling. The usual situation is that sales leaders expect sales teams to be at their best when they reach out to prospects. However, there is often not adequate information available to the sales reps to do this.
Sales Intelligence, including tools and applications that go with it, is a crucial investment for an organization that demands and anticipates sales success.
