By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
From cloud computing to collecting market insights, employing data is already important. But big data analytics is set to become essential to business strategies other than simply knowing where you should market or where there may be a sale. According to the Business 2 Community, a marketing resource, organizations often forget that customer intelligence relies on big data, and it’s essential that professionals consider big data as an integral part of any sales or marketing strategy.
According to CIO, customer analytics allows companies to focus on the how they can help their clients instead of just becoming informed on the products. For example, CIO reported that IT companies are using big data as a way to examine how their solution will help the customer in real life. By examining what types of products customers need to tackle every day challenges, IT businesses are able to design a custom solution that can produce stronger results.
Big Data in Sales and Marketing
It’s so much easier to glean market insights when you have the right tools, and big data is the foundation of many types of customer intelligence software—including FirstRain. According to eWeek, an IT news resource, big data helps improve client and partner relations by providing a measurable connection between you and them. Accruing customer intelligence through traceable analytics ensures companies are able to raise their customer service and optimize their strategies for selling products or solutions.
Understanding that big data is an important aspect of your customer intelligence solution can help you optimize sales and marketing strategies. Being able to stay up-to-date on where your clients’ markets are headed and what types of solutions they’ll require can allow you to anticipate your sales or marketing growth. When you know that your customer is going to need a new information storage solution, or that the latest product innovation is gaining traction in the industry, you can create a realistic timeline and sales goals. Big data offers you a way to actually solve your customer’s problem, instead of simply selling them a solution that may not necessarily produce the desired results.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
The art of selling a product relies on getting the customer interested in what you have to offer, but many times sales reps get too excited themselves and botch the sale. Making sure your client is first enthusiastic about the product before asking for them to commit is important to closing the deal. In fact, knowing your customers and gathering sales intelligence are both integral aspects to making the product memorable. Customers want to feel they can trust the credibility of their sales rep and that the product will make a difference to their productivity. Here are three things to keep in mind to get clients on board with a product and close the sale:
1. Become a Dependable Source
In an article for Inc., sales expert Geoffrey James suggested reps ask themselves if their claims about the product are reliable. When you are speaking with a new customer, the first few minutes are important to sowing the seeds of a trustworthy and beneficial relationship. Ensuring each of your claims are credible and showcasing your expertise of the product can help inspire the customer.
This is where gathering market insights is key in the sales process. Assembling reliable testimonials from authoritative sources or speaking to how an expert in the field uses the product can help customers understand that you can back the claims you’re making about the product. This can also help clients be aware that other companies or professionals in the industry believe in the item or service, and they should too.
2. Speak to Results
Talking about the product’s features is often not enough—you need to be able to show its measurable results.
Gregg Schwartz, a sales and marketing profession, wrote in an article for Young Entrepreneur, an online entrepreneur community, that sales reps can lose a sale by being too evangelical about a product. This can be anything from depicting your product as being the greatest new invention to giving the customer unrealistic expectations about the product. So talk about how the product, service or solution will benefit the company, but be careful not to promise too much.
Entrepreneur also suggested reps bring along market research to the meeting so customers are able to see results firsthand. Allowing clients to read as well as listen to how the solution will help them can be crucial in getting customers energized.
3. Watch Your Wording
Perhaps one of the most important tips is to be cautious about the words you use when speaking to a client. While a document you may bring along uses the word “excited,” saying the word is not going to help the client feel enthusiastic about the product. Employing buzz words, like innovative or guarantee, may alarm rather than inspire. Customers are aware of which words or phrases may be rehearsed, or what Schwartz calls “mental spam.”
Making an effort to avoid overused words can help you be more creative with your sales approach. For example, instead of saying a product is new and improved, speak to its previous limitations and how the latest version is the answer to those challenges. One way to do this is by making a list of words you think may put off the client and stay focused on avoiding them during a meeting. Later on you may notice one or two instances where the word is applicable, but exciting the client is about showing them something they may not have seen before.
By Nora Weintraub
The year is already halfway done—take a moment to process that. You only have six more months to finish whatever you’ve put off, be it perfecting your sales pitch or identifying sales opportunities. Okay, maybe you have some grace period in January, but if you’d set out to accomplish something by the end of the year, half of your time is now gone. Now, take a breath and let that mid-year crisis feeling float away. By managing your time wisely, exercising just a few organizational skills and focusing on what you need to get done, you can reach your end-of-the-year sales goals (or any goal, really) by the deadline and start 2014 off fresh.
1. Identify Where You’re Behind
What’s lacking? Do you still have a couple outstanding sales? Did you not meet your sales goals for a few consecutive months? Did you mean to start being active on Twitter? Start off your personal program to meet those targets by taking a look at what you still have to do—even if you’d rather not. You may not have gotten everything done at the beginning of the year, but you still have another six months to accomplish it all. Carve out some time in your busy schedule and make a good old fashioned to-do list, then place it in an area you see every single day. The key is to take a look at what you still have to do on a daily basis so that it stays at the forefront of your mind.
2. Create Personal Deadlines
On your to-do list, make your own deadlines. If you need to meet a certain sales goal by October, make an effort to get it done by mid-September. In an interview with Inc., Krissi Barr, founder of consulting firm Barr Corporate Success, advised professionals to establish their own goals and make them shorter than the official deadline.
“If I think something is going to take me an hour, I give myself 40 minutes,” Barr said. “By shrinking your mental deadlines, you work faster and with greater focus.”
Knowing that you only have another two months to close a sale can help you make it a priority, even if it doesn’t have to be done for three months. You can then take that extra month to establish a strong relationship with the client or fix any issues so you aren’t struggling with numerous challenges come December.
3. Start Your Day Calm and Energized
Wake up half an hour early and go for a run or hop on your bike. Getting some exercise in the morning, even if it’s just a few stretches or walking around the block, can help you get your brain moving before you enter the office. According to the American Psychological Association, exercise enhances a person’s mood and helps him or her feel motivated for the rest of the day. It also helps condition the brain to deal with stress better, making the mind stronger in the long term. Exercising can also normalize your rest patterns, helping you to get to sleep faster and better able to tackle the next day.
4. Don’t Quit
This may be the most important item on this list—do not give up. There will be kinks in the road to reaching your goals, but don’t let them stop you. In an article for Entrepreneur, business expert Grant Cardone reminded professionals that roadblocks only mean you need to get more creative in your sales strategy. If a customer has turned down your business, take the opportunity to connect on social media or follow up a few weeks later. The will to succeed is one of the best qualities a sales rep can have.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
Turning that sales lead into a qualified one rarely happens on accident; sales reps put hours of time and effort into preparing the perfect pitch. However, it may not always lead to a sale. You knew exactly what aspects of the product you were going to highlight in the pitch, conducted your B2B market research and identified the perfect sales opportunity. So what went wrong? Maybe you forgot one essential thing–selling the product in a real interaction.
Connect with the Client
During a business meeting it is often easier to give a presentation to the client because you stick to your sales pitch. While you are being professional and organized, remember to set aside a chunk of time for the client to ask questions. Taking a few moments of the interaction to have a dialogue with the customer can go a long way to closing the sale. This can be the perfect opportunity to tell a story about how the product has benefited others.
In a piece for Business Insider, Eric Barker wrote every salesperson must have empathy to be successful. Barker, a writer at Wired Magazine, suggested showing you want to address the client's concerns by imitating their body language. Barker cited research has shown that mimicking can make a sales pitch 20 percent more effective. By mirroring the client, you are better able to respond to customer questions and the client is more likely to feel as if they can trust you—and that's going to result in higher revenue productivity.
Remember! Results Vs Features
You completed hours of customer research and gleaned a lifetime of market intelligence–just don't forget to optimize your pitch by focusing on the results the client will get from the product, not necessarily the features. According to sales expert Geoffrey James at Inc.com, one of the biggest mistakes sales professionals make is skipping over how the product will benefit the client. Instead, sales reps center their pitch on the product's advanced features, thinking that is enough to make the client want to buy the product. Yet, James recommended sales professionals remember clients want to know how this product is different than all the rest, why it is perfect for them and how it will affect their bottom line.
Keep in mind that the client knows you are trying to sell them a product, so keep your head straight and focus on earning their trust.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
Big data is a big topic these days. With more companies jumping on the business intelligence bandwagon, one common misconception is you can't integrate big data analytics into your business monitoring system. Now, more sales professionals may have become aware of data analytics in the past year, but that does not mean it is an entirely new development and is incompatible with CRM systems. In fact, placing data into your tracking software is exactly what you want to do. Investing in BI and market intelligence go hand in hand, and big data is a critical component of each. Being able to extract usable information from the data pile is a great way for sales and marketing reps to ensure they drive business and, in turn, revenue.
The Epic Confusion Over Big Data
Many sales professionals understand the importance of customer and business intelligence, and know analytics is part of how it all works together. Yet many reps continue to misunderstand how important big data really is to their success. Some are even unsure if they really need it. And with the infinite amount of intelligence out there, you need it, because you just cannot possibly get through all of the information without some help.
Adam Binnie, global vice president for SAP, told Forbes the process of sifting through all of the collected intelligence is a means to an end for optimizing your investment.
"While we talk a lot about the data and the impact of that data, at the end of the day […] analytics is about giving people information so that those people can have an impact on the success of an organization," he said.
In a recent article for Business News Daily, Elizabeth Palermo broke down how big data helps professionals sort through the vast amounts of accumulated insights. Palermo, a technology professional, said most software involves three data tools: extraction, architecture and query development. These basic features are there for a reason – they select only certain parts of the data pool and bring them to your attention, then, many times, the data can be stored for future use. It's wonderfully efficient.
But much of the confusion results from how messy big data can get when you don't have the right tools to figure out what you actually need. In his blog for TechRepublic, Toby Wolpe said this is where one of big data's big myths came into existence. Analytics become easier to decipher if you have the right BI platform. Wolpe also advised professionals to remember that when you have a great customer and business intelligence tool, using big data is easy.
And many agree with him, including Paul O'Leary, CTO for BI firm Quantivo, who told Forbes all of the mess results from not using an appropriate platform to get the proper information.
"The big challenge in big data visualization is going from lots of raw data and turning it into a form where you've done the calculations," O'Leary said. "It becomes very easy to visualize once you've done the heavy lifting."
When you have a system that can do that heavy lifting for you, you're most of the way there. The right platform should give you context to the data, be able to give you information right as it's happening and give you everything your customers need to be successful. Investing in the right tool can make a world of difference when industries like sales and marketing change every day.
By Daniela Barbosa, Director of Business Development
Utilizing social enterprise collaboration allows sales professionals to not only connect with customers on a regular basis but to continually drive sales. Investing in social enterprise platforms is a great customer intelligence strategy, but there is often a disconnect between what a sales team or a company wants to happen by bringing in a social business and what actually occurs. From disengaging with clients to not doing the proper research from the get-go, you may start to see your precious ROI go down the drain. But you can prevent that from happening by identifying the sales opportunities that will come from employing social enterprise platforms for increasing revenue productivity to ensure you are making the most out of your investment.
1. Calculate Realistic Costs
According to data from Simpler Media Group, the social enterprise software market is set to reach $6.4 billion by 2016. Gathering exactly what your business or team wants to accomplish can significantly help B2B companies maximize their social enterprise investment and prevent finances from entering the digital ether.
In a piece for Entrepreneur, business writer John Patrick Pullen suggested companies develop an ROI formula before investing in social enterprise. Taking all of the data into account helps you create a social mission statement and set realistic goals. Assembling all of the information before entering a contract helps ensure you are not devoting more money into a social media campaign than you have to.
2. It's All About the Tech
In an article for Salesforce, Vala Afshar, CCO and CMO at Enterasys, advised companies to take a peek at the technology the social enterprise uses. Outdated software can hamper how the business connects with clients and collects customer insights. Afshar suggested sales professionals or team managers identify the specific set of parameters the enterprise employs. According to Afshar, streamlined technology that is built to easily adopt to changing preferences helps sales teams optimize their investment.
3. Go Where Your Clients Are
By ensuring the technology used is top notch, sales teams are better able to identify their customers' online activity. Afshar suggested taking clients' temperatures when examining social enterprise software. You might want to have a quick chat with your social enterprise contact to understand whether they are on top of the latest and greatest social platforms.
4. Plan Everything Out
In his Entrepreneur blog, Jason Falls, CEO of Social Media Explorer, advised companies to think beyond the benefits of entering the online world to drive their social enterprise ROI. Create a plan of action that the social business can stick to, but still provides room for change. Leaving things up in the air can significantly damper a social media campaign, so giving your enterprise contact as much information as possible about where your company is headed improves your chances of receiving a strong ROI.
Plus, no one wants to be left in the dark when they are trying to provide you with a service. If you want to be on Facebook verses Twitter, let them know. Plan everything out – you'll thank yourself later.
5. Follow Through
Don't just let things go after doing all this great work early on – you have to follow through on your plan, stay in communication with your contact and provide feedback on a regular basis. Frequent connection and follow ups can help you identify any changes right away instead of wasting time in the future. Guiding a social plan along the way is much easier than making a dramatic shift half-way through the relationship. So stay in contact, because not doing so is setting you up for disaster.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
Tapping into opportunities to improve sales productivity by gleaning insights derived from market intelligence help sales reps find ways to motivate clients and become top performers. But the sales superstars do more than optimize their customer markets – they are challengers. They get that understanding their client's industry – where its going, what's trending in it, how the product is the solution for the customer's specific issues – provides them with a means of not only engaging the client to make the sale, but how they supply a service.
According to research from the Corporate Executive Board, a sales rep's success comes from distinguishing the client's demands through customer intelligence. These professionals are the high performers, their team's go-to person, client challengers, and it is essential for senior sales leaders to give their reps the best shot at shaping their client's needs and providing a solution.
Not All Reps are Created Equal
CEB research found 85 percent of sales professionals do not have the required skills to become top reps. According to the study, salespeople who are able to find and employ customer insights have an increased chance of promoting their product to clients and clinching the sale. Approximately one in six sales reps are natural "challengers" and are able to see strong numbers as a result.
In an interview with Jill Konrath, a sales strategist, research authors Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon defined challenger reps as those professionals who are able to take control of a customer meeting, can identify and target their client's specific needs and can provide innovative solutions for their customer's challenges.
Challenger reps may be hard to hire for since some may not have prior sales experience – in fact, CEB found 15.6 million individuals with the traits outside of the industry – and numerous factors must be taken into account during the hiring process. Therefore, you need to develop one.
According to Salesforce's Brent Adamson, there are five types of sales reps. Challengers are one of the profiles, but a sales team can also have a hard worker, a relationship builder, a lone wolf and a problem solver. Creating an entire team of challengers may be a bit too much, but Adamson suggested more teams need to cultivate challenger qualities, such as teaching the customer, since that is where the industry is heading.
Fostering certain challenger aspects in reps can help you make sure your team has the abilities needed to make the sale well into the future. Cultivate customer insights, promote their debate skills and remind them to deliver the complete sales experience to clients, because doing so can produce stronger customer relationships.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
It may be difficult for you to identify when to pitch to certain clients and when not to. Investing in B2B market research is key to understanding your customers, but all too often many of us enter a customer meeting without actually preparing beforehand. This can result in more than just a lost sale – it can lead to reduced confidence and the ongoing question of what went wrong. Not preparing for the sales call is basically waving a sales opportunity goodbye just because you were too eager to get rolling. But, don't feel too bad – even the most veteran sales professionals do it. Here's a quick checklist you can use before you leave your desk to meet with a client.
1. Get Intimate with Client Knowledge
Not knowing what's going on in your customer's industry is a major mistake many sales professionals make. Understanding just what your client does is not enough, you must be familiar with where the market is heading and how what your selling fits into future plans. So many salespeople let market insights pass them by and then wonder why they are not top performers.
Industries change on a daily basis. Yes, you read that right – a daily basis. Just because training software was high last week or even yesterday does not mean your technology client is interested in it right this moment. Maybe they want to know everything about cloud commuting because – guess what – it's trending today. Being on point with your knowledge is essential to pre-meeting prepping.
The first thing you should always do is to utilize your customer intelligence software. Even just a glance is often enough for some sales people. Doing so may help you adjust your pitch strategy enough to convince the client to purchase the product.
In an op-ed piece for Inc magazine, Mark Suster recommended sales people look beyond "sell and tell" approach and instead really get to know the client. And that relies on not only knowing the customer but the ins and outs of the product.
2. Understand the Product – Intimately
Suster suggested you get into a discussion with the client. An ongoing conversation helps customers invest in not only what you are selling but you and your brand as well. However, so many sales professionals only know a few key points about the product due to time constraints and cannot get beyond the "sell and tell" technique because their knowledge is lacking.
So stop thinking you will be able to remember all of the product's features and review what you're selling beforehand. Otherwise your client won't trust you and walk out the door. A quick glimpse may be enough for more experienced sales professionals but carefully rereading any and all product information can help you to answer every single customer question and avoid missing the sale.
3. Pump Up the Motivation
Confidence is essential to convincing the client to buy your product. If you have to go the Dwight Schrute route and rock out to heavy metal before stepping out of your car, do it. Just remember to park far enough away from the building so the customer doesn't see – unless they are headbangers themselves.
While it may seem unwarranted, motivating yourself before entering the meeting is a great strategy to adopt. Often, it takes the first few minutes of an interaction to get focused, so doing it all beforehand increases your chances. Staying professional is key to making the sale, but having a little fun before you enter that meeting can help you get energized.
4. Be Cool
Every sales person gets rejected at some point – so be prepared for it. No matter how much research you do or pumped up you get, sometimes the client doesn't buy the product. Many times, persistence pays off, but a rejection offers many benefits, like figuring out what part of your pitch doesn't work. So be prepared for it before it happens.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
Believe it or not, having a positive attitude does not rely on being perky all the time – but on customer knowledge. It may sound easier said than done, but mobilizing customers to buy your product comes from understanding the client's needs, and – oh, yes – sales intelligence. Investing in customer analytics does not have to be a pain when you find the right professional application, such as FirstRain. When you have information right at your fingertips, you can go into a sales call or client meeting with a positive energy that just emits confidence – and mobilize your client to close the sale in the process.
Knowledge Linked to Confidence
Bloomberg Businessweek advised salespeople collect as much data as possible about a client before an interaction. According to an Op-Ed piece by Grant Cardone for Entrepreneur, customer insights are not only important to closing the sale but also for your confidence to do so. If you think you don't have the tools to sell the product, you probably won't. Entrepreneur suggested you take a look at the customer's purchasing history and develop a plan of action in case your team wasn't able to make the deal on the product before.
In a recent article, Cardone, a salesperson and writer at Entrepreneur, recommended sales representatives glean sales intelligence from client analytics in order to visualize the sale. Doing so not only helps you play out possible scenarios and prepare for what might happen during the interaction but to line up a set of questions that shows the customer that you know exactly why they need the product.
"For example, 'When you do this with me, you will get this result,'" Cardone wrote. "If a customer is undecided about a sale, I tell them: 'It's only a matter of time before you do this with me.' I recently did this with a customer and after the third time he said: 'Dude, you are pretty confident, I like how you keep assuming the sale.'"
The Power of Client Insight
Inc.com suggested sales representatives and teams remember that attitude is everything. But while you can pretty much fake your way through a smile and excited hand gestures, true positivity comes from confidence – which we already know gets its start in understanding customer intelligence.
One of the strategies Inc.com writer Geoffrey James advised salespeople to adopt for staying positive and confident in any situation is to constantly frame each challenge in your mind into a challenge rather than a barrier.
For example, Corporate Executive Board described some customer contacts as skeptics, or clients who always ask questions, almost like a drill sergeant. Sales people who have not invested in market insights may falter when they come under endless questioning, but those reps who identify it as an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge are able to close the sale.
Many sales professionals try to stay positive and confident when entering client contact interactions, but that attitude can turn negative when they don't have the proper insights. Mobilizing customers to invest in your product lies in confidence – and it all comes down to sales intelligence.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
From the information technology industry to marketing, it seems like most professionals in almost every field are talking about the cloud these days. And it's no wonder – investing in cloud software for your enterprise lets you gain market intelligence, analyze industry trends and even examine customer analytics. The cloud will become one of the top innovations for salespeople fairly soon.
In fact, the trend is becoming so wide spread that Salesforce recently acquired business intelligence startup EdgeSpring to enhance the site's marketing cloud. If that's not enough, the investment came a week after the site purchased email marketing firm ExactTarget for $2.5 billion. The integration of business intelligence with analytics is set to help boost customer relationship management (CRM) ROI.
Cloud sales have gone through the roof, with Ellen O'Brien, executive editor at TechCrunch, suggesting recent slowdowns in cloud computing storage are due to the rapid increase in users. O'Brien reported cloud storage vendors have been around for years, but the recent uptick in the demand for customer insight solutions and tools as well as user demand, sales have significantly increased. More sales people are now investing in the tools they need to ensure the sale and to increase their CRM ROI.
Customer Conversion Flies Into the Cloud
Louis Columbus, cloud computing expert and Forbes contributor, recently wrote that now is the era of digital customer insights for the marketing industry. With the purchase of EdgeSpring and ExactTarget by Salesforce, the marketing world is on the cusp of integrating cloud computing into their customer insight platforms. But the advertising industry is just the latest in a long line to have adopted cloud analytics. Sales was one of the first.
Cloud-based services came into the sales mainstream with platform applications, such as FirstRain into Salesforce, by bringing sales people up to date on the latest customer insights and intelligence. Business analytics that use the cloud format allows you to get a glimpse into what's going on in the industry, what's trending up or down and what areas to focus on. It cuts your customer research time in half while boosting your client conversion rates skyward.
Many of us try to take time everyday to do some Internet research about our clients, but it often gets a back seat to other more pressing issues. And most of the time, treading through the clutter of information can be a hassle. Having access to one place that gives you the most important insights of the day keeps you connected with customers and be prepared for every client interaction.
