Work Smarter, Not Harder: How to use Sales Intelligence to increase sales

 

Generating sales is crucial for business. Sales intelligence tools are the wave of the future in lead generation. Learn how to use them to boost sales!

The global market of sales intelligent tools is worth between $100 and $150 million. Sales intelligence tools offer several advantages to businesses, and their demand is on the increase. They help take away much of the hard work in driving sales by making marketing efforts more efficient.

Attracting new customers to your business is one thing, but closing a sale is something entirely different. One reason is that you may be talking to the wrong clients all along. An important factor in selling a product or service is to identify the right customers.

It’s easy to think that you’ve identified the personas, but without data and analytics, it’s difficult to tell. One way to know if you’re on track is to use sales intelligence software.

Keep on reading to learn more!

What Is Sales Intelligence?

Sales intelligence refers to an assortment of practices, technologies, practices, and applications. They make it easy for you to collect, integrate, present, evaluate and analyze customer data.  It’s the avenue through which you get pertinent information regarding the impact of your marketing campaigns.

The tools also help you see the prospects you’re selling to, where they’re from, and create case-specific solutions. The primary challenge with sales intelligence is the type of content from sales organizations. The data is only useful if it’ll help in actual selling.

For example, if the only data you get is a name and email address, you may be unable to do much with it. Sales intelligence is only useful if it delivers as much information as possible. The more you know about your prospect, the easier it’ll be to sell to them.

The information your SI tools gather should empower your sales reps to make more conversions. They also should be able to deepen existing relationships through cross-selling and up-selling.

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Sales Intelligence Solution

The process of acquiring a sales intelligent package is an investment you should approach with caution. Your choice should help you generate more and better leads as well as convert potential clients into long-term ones.

Sales intelligence technology develops your sales in a relevant and targeted way. They keep you alert on what is happening in your industry. As such, you can take the suitable actions at the right time.

Not all solutions are the same, and you need to be specific in what you’re looking for. Here are specific considerations for your sales intelligence solution.

1. How Often Will You Update Your Data?

A good portion of data present in a company is obsolete within one year. This is a good reason to ensure the technology you adopt has a regular updating system. You should aim at keeping information up-to-date to remain relevant to sales canvassing.

2. How Will You Avoid Data Duplication?

If in your database you already have some suggested leads, you don’t want a solution that’ll duplicate the same information. Ask the vendor whether his tool can filter your database to avoid doubling-up. This should well be established before installation of the software.

You shouldn’t have to sort data manually afterward.

3. Is the Solution Compatible With Your CRM?

Most businesses have a CRM system they use to canvass for business.  The sales intelligence solution you choose should be compatible with your CRM. One way to install the solution is as a stand-alone interface not connected to CRM.

The other most commonly used way of installing the solution is encapsulating it in your CRM system. This integration benefits you directly from the CRM functions through a shared interface. The approach is more practical as it integrates the data needed by the sales team.

The team doesn’t have to keep moving from one interface to another in search of the data they need. This eliminates the risk of data loss and time wastage. Having a system that provides information in real time is best in increasing efficiency

4. How Does it Collect Data and Information?

How your sales intelligence tool collects information can help your sales team or pollute it with inappropriate information. Ideally, the software should gather information from various sources like social networks, crowdsourcing, and trawling the web. However, too much information can be challenging to sort and use appropriately.

Varied information enriches your company by letting you know what’s happening around you. Afterward, you can evaluate the potential of the information by their context. Eventually, you can determine the list of hot leads ready to be contacted.

Not all solutions you come across have this advanced technology at their disposal. Most of them use basic algorithms that search based on keywords. This leaves you with the task of sorting out the information to pick what’s relevant.

Remember to check the scope of sources your software uses, and the technology it employs in data collection.

Benefits of Sales Intelligence Solutions

Sales intelligence solutions are designed to help the sales team perform their job better. The positive impacts of SI are felt through

1. Higher Productivity

The intelligence tools can automatically prioritize follow-ups. They can also categorize leads to qualification-based and value-based groups. This helps to lessen the amount of time they spend in manual parsing that sometimes leads to unqualified leads.

2. Rewarding Conversations

As a retail trader, intelligence tools help you understand your prospects better. From the perspective of a customer, it’s annoying when a salesperson doesn’t understand your needs. The conversation will revolve around the product, instead of the buyer’s preferences and goals.

Sales intelligence shows sales reps the areas where most customers will be most responsive. Conversations should be steered towards those areas, mining for value around those points.

3. Smarter Sales Strategies

SI is vital to decision makers. It distills detailed insights from databases that characterize their department. From these insights, the sales manager will be in a better position to engage prospects.

They can come up with strategies to improve lead conversion ratios and consequently increase sales.

Final Thoughts

Sales intelligence is a concept that businesses should embrace to keep them ahead of the competition. By identifying your prospective leads, you’ll narrow down on the information that can help convert into sales. Using SI the correct way will see your business enjoy the benefits of increased productivity and better lead conversions.

When choosing a sales intelligence solution, ensure it’s compatible with your CRM. It also shouldn’t duplicate existing data and will keep information updated. For you to win against your competitors, you must get real-time data from the industry as trends change.

 

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This article is written by Kompass and originally published here.

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