Sales Intelligence Technology: Helping Your Sales Teams Be a Little Smarter Than Everyone Else

With the way that we’ve been screaming it from the rooftops, you’ve probably heard that InsideView and DemandMatrix are Demandbase companies now. So much is happening all at once that it can be hard to find time to go into detail about what exactly it is that we’re so excited about. And the truth is, there aren’t just one or two things, there’s four. Four clouds. But today, I want to focus on one, and if you know me, it won’t surprise you that I think this cloud is one of the single greatest things to come out of this amalgamation of industry heavy-hitters.

Introducing: The Sales Intelligence Cloud!

Let’s rewind: what is sales intelligence?

In short, sales intelligence (SI) helps you sell more intelligently. How? By using data and insights to target and engage your best prospects (read more about sales intelligence and how technology can help you increase sales velocity here).

But that definition of SI is a little too broad of a lens for what we’re cooking up at Demandbase. More specifically, the Sales Intelligence Cloud – powered by InsideView – takes everything you love about traditional SI and adds a little something extra to the mix. The Sales Intelligence Cloud combines data and insights to help you identify who to target, why you should target them, when to reach out, and how to connect for the best results. 

Data

We use data to answer the question of who we should be targeting. There are a lot of factors that play into determining who in the crowd should be targeted for your specific products, services, and campaigns. The major players are:

• Company firmographics – size, location, industry, contact information, etc.
• Contact data – job titles, locations, email addresses, phone numbers (business, direct, and mobile), social handles, education
• Technographics – insights gathered from an account’s tech stack, tech usage trends, and interest in purchasing new technology.
• Intent data – indicators of an account’s level of interest in your company or category.

Insights

The more information and insights you have, the more effective your Sales team will be. And when you outfit them with the right tools and insights, you set them up for more knowledgeable interactions with all of your prospects across industries. With the Sales Intelligence Cloud, in the amount of time it takes you to brew your morning coffee you can:

• Know when to reach out and what to say based on current news and social insights
• Leverage industry trends and challenges to demonstrate knowledge and offer relevant solutions
• Tap into conversation starters to grab attention

Connections

According to an old UNC Kenan-Flagler School of Business study, having a relationship or connection can increase response rates anywhere from 44 – 88 percent. And according to Harvard Business Review, 90 percent of C-level executives don’t reply to cold calls or cold emails. So it’s time to put those LinkedIn connections and years of networking to good use! The Sales Intelligence Cloud’s connections help you find the ways that you’re already connected to your target accounts and the people who work there by aggregating all of your connections in one place – something no other SI solution can offer. And to sweeten the deal, it isn’t just your connections, the Sales Intelligence Cloud also gives you visibility into your colleagues connections. Yeah. It’s pretty powerful!

Connection categories include:

• Work history – to find connections based on your work history and to find referrals to prospects through your network
• Education – to find referrals through fellow alumni from your alma mater
• Reference accounts – by searching the companies you have done business with to identify contacts who can connect you to your prospects
• Personal connections – using your LinkedIn, Gmail, and Outlook rolodex to identify connections who can give warm introductions or referrals to accounts or specific prospects

Why do I need SI?

All of my conversations lead to this question one way or another, and you might think that I’d get tired of you asking it, but I don’t. I love it. The truth is, you don’t need SI to sell.

You need SI to win.

Buyers are busy, and in order to earn their interest, you first have to catch their attention. And you don’t have to do anything crazy to get their attention. I like to say that what it comes down to is being smarter than the average bear. Think about it: does anyone really like being sold to? No. But if you show up at the right moment with the right solution, people will feel like you’re helping them solve a problem instead of bombarding them with sales pitches and advertisements that they didn’t ask for.

Sales intelligence helps you engage the right buyers at the right time with the right message. Or, to put it in sales-speak, sales intelligence helps you build a higher quality pipeline, increase sales velocity, and give your win rate a boost…all while saving you time.

Why you need the Demandbase Sales Intelligence Cloud

You can try to gather the intelligence needed to make these decisions on your own, but it’s going to suck. Traditional methods take way too much time, don’t give you any way of knowing whether or not the information you’ve gathered is still valid, and it’s highly likely that you will miss some key business events that could give you a reason to reach out. This isn’t your fault, it just means you aren’t a robot – and that’s a good thing!

Or, instead of putting yourself through the hassle of collecting that data – some of which isn’t even relevant – from all across the web, you could have it at the tip of your fingers exactly when you need it.

The Sales Intelligence Cloud brings the information to you within your CRM, on your mobile device, or wherever you’d normally do your data sleuthing, so long as you have the Sales Intelligence Cloud browser extension installed. Powered by InsideView, the Demandbase Sales Intelligence Cloud uses artificial and human intelligence to gather and validate data and intelligence from over 40 thousand sources, so you can trust that the data is accurate instead of hoping that everyone’s LinkedIn information is up to date. You can even set up and receive sales trigger alerts to your inbox so you can get a jump on the competition by knowing the instant a target account has a relevant business event such as a new round of funding, a product launch, a new executive, and such.

How to use sales intelligence

I have more than a couple of tips and tricks up my sleeve. A magician never reveals her secrets, but I am no magician. If you want to learn more about how you can increase your Sales team’s productivity, then look no further than my aptly named Sales Secrets blog series. I cover everything from turning news into sales to turning industry insights into icebreakers, family trees into fortune, and more.

And if you want to learn more about how the Sales Intelligence Cloud can keep your Sales and Marketing teams laser focused on finding new prospects and plan account strategies based on technology they use, watch the video below or head over to DBTV for more sales tips and tricks from industry experts.

Check out DBTV, featuring a variety of shows, ranging from thought leadership programming to profiles in customer success. This is your one-stop on-demand streaming hub for all the latest in B2B Go-To-Market.