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Autonomous Cars That Drive Us Together

Jan 2017/in , , , /by

Few things indicate an industrial revolution better than a controversial topic that ironically becomes a unifying factor. The biggest, boldest, headlines shout that 3 in 4 Americans are afraid to drive in an autonomous car, Uber and the DMV are head to head, and the autonomous car industry has the potential to eliminate jobs in up to 128 industries. However, other headlines have written a different story. From companies to technology to cars themselves, the Autonomous Car market is driving us all into a new, collaborative future.

Considered an initial stretch on the roadway to fully autonomous cars, V2V technology, vehicle-to-vehicle, is a wireless network enabling cars to converse with each other. At the next level, the technology would extend to V2I, vehicle-to-infrastructure, enabling cars and say, stoplights, to communicate as well. Consider a future city that is completely connected, from autonomous cars to smart buildings.

Collaboration is not just in the future. Even now, auto manufacturers and car service companies are establishing surprising relationships in order to win this grounded version of the “race to space”. Industry giant General Motors has reached out to carpool service application, Lyft, to test self-driving taxis. Alphabet, Google parent and Autonomous Car technology leader, may now be an Autonomous Car social leader as well in its car project, Waymo. The company already paired with Chrysler Pacifica minivans and is now in talks with Honda on accommodating Waymo’s self-driving technology in an upcoming model – a significant change from Google’s small, bubble cars I pass on our Bay Area roads. In a recent development, Audi and Nvidia have united over autonomous cars.

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Those large companies seeking committed relationships, are resulting in start-up acquisitions at every turn:

  • GM spent $1billion on Cruise Automation for their self-driving technology
  • Uber spent $680 million on Otto for their self-driving truck
  • In the second biggest tech acquisition in history, Qualcomm spent $39 billion to takeover NXP Semiconductors for a path to make chips for autonomous cars

Why do Autonomous Cars drive such cooperation? Maybe it is the cars’ origin – a unique world of technological cooperation. Founder of Comma.ai and iPhone unlocking, 26-year old George Hotz, has published open-source software and hardware driving agents in an effort to “become the Android of self-driving cars”. Consistent with this approach, Linux has devoted a foundation project to the mission of “creating open source software solutions for automotive applications.” The project, Automotive Grade Linux, or simply AGL, recently released the most advanced version of its platform yet. The AGL community is made up of nearly 90 companies with an impressive roster of Ford, Honda, Toyota, and more.

“This unprecedented level of collaboration is a clear indication that the automotive industry is adopting an open source development methodology that is resulting in faster innovation with more frequent software releases and new features.”

Dan Cauchy
Executive Director, Automotive Grade Linux

Maybe you’re not a fan of jumping on bandwagons. But with expectations of 21 million autonomous vehicles sold globally by 2035, it might be time for all of us to take a seat in any wagon pulled by the Autonomous Car.

 

This blog is part of an Industry & Market Series –  analyzing what FirstRain users are tracking at the moment in order to gain advantage for the moment.

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FirstRain Customer Insights Wins Industry Awards

Jul 2014/in /by

We are excited to announce that we’re continuing the momentum from the beginning of the year and are finishing Q2 on a high note by winning 2 awards this month!

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FirstRain Customer Insights has just won the DataWeek + API World 2014 award for Most Innovative Customer Intelligence Solution.

Customer Insights was selected by crowd vote, where thousands of people voted on the top Data + API technologies of 2014.

As DataWeek + API World awards recipients, our team will be attending and participating in this year’s conference & expo. We’re offering 50 free OPEN passes (for the Expo, Keynotes, and Open Talks) to our community. Register here to get your pass!

https://dataweek14.eventbrite.com/?discount=dw14-award-guest

 

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We were also named a finalist in the 2014 Stratus Awards. The Business Intelligence Group today announced the 2014 winners of the Stratus Awards. The inaugural industry awards competition recognizes those companies innovating in the Cloud and providing innovative offerings that are truly differentiated in the market.

 

We work hard to provide the most relevant, personal customer insights to our users to help them meet and exceed their own revenue and customer goals. These awards denote the importance of personal business analytics in today’s world and validate the hard work we put in every day for our customers!

 

Increase CRM ROI

How to Maximize CRM ROI

May 2014/in /by

CRM has become an integral part of any salesperson’s workflow, but buying and implementing a CRM system is a big investment for any company. Companies need to make sure they get the best ROI they can—and the value CRM systems bring is not only from engaging users but also by providing them with critical information that helps them do their jobs smarter and better.

CRM ROI depends almost exclusively on user adoption. According to the Corporate Executive Board, “Only with high levels of adoption could any potential benefits or enhancements of the CRM be realized and applied to produce growth.” But how do you drive adoption amongst your team to ultimately see the growth that led you to implement the CRM in the first place? The answer is to make the system invaluable to them by using it to provide them with incredibly relevant customer insights.

It’s well known that people will not change the workflow to which they are accustomed unless they see a clear personal benefit of doing so—the typical “What’s in it for Me” syndrome. With enterprise B2B sales teams, it has been proven that incorporating personally relevant information on customers and prospects into CRM workflows can make the team realize that the CRM system does provide significant value. For example, FirstRain’s annual end-user survey shows that by delivering relevant insights when and where they need it, sales can see up to a 17% productivity increase, which is significant.

One of our customers, JDSU,recognized a new set of needs to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their global sales organization. Their sales and marketing teams now required more customer intelligence in order to advise them on their end-to-end networking needs, while also improving sales productivity.

Their previous CRM ROI was not ideal due to poor usability. They selected FirstRain Customer Insights for salesforce.com to be integrated into their CRM solution. Their salespeople are now fully on board using Salesforce, and through their FirstRain views personalized to their role and what they sell, they are able to find more sales opportunities and build better relationships with their customers.

Thanks to salesforce.com and FirstRain, the entire team JDSU is now on the same page, and the critical insights provided by personal business analytics was one of the major incentives to drive adoption and help them maximize CRM ROI.

Work Smarter Not Harder

Work smarter, not harder, to drive more revenue

May 2014/in , /by

Everyone wants to be as effective as possible at his job, and to be effective one needs to have deep knowledge of his or her business. Whether you’re a salesperson or a marketer, your job effectiveness most likely depends on how well you know your products, customers and markets. But people struggle with unearthing the critical information that will take them to the next step, and according to an IBM study “From Stretched to Strengthened Insights,” 66% of companies lack an in-depth understanding of their customers. This leaves them with a huge gap that they try to bridge by spending an inordinate amount of time searching for key insights,  hidden in a sea of information overload.

But you can work smarter, not harder, and drive more revenue by making sure of a few critical things:

  1. Stop searching for information. If the only way you’re getting the information you need on your key customers and markets is by doing a generic search, you’re spending way too much time looking through a bunch of stuff you don’t need. Using a personal business analytics solution that delivers you the insights you need can save you valuable time, while bringing you up to speed on the things you care about most.
  2. Make sure every meeting is effective. Too much time and energy is wasted in meetings that accomplish nothing—and if they happen with a client, that’s a surefire way to slow down the sales cycle and make it harder to close the deal. By having information that is extremely relevant to that particular account, you can ensure that every meeting is strategic and valuable.
  3. Stay in sync with your team. When the entire team is on board with a particular strategy, you’re all pulling together to achieve a goal, resulting in your team running like a well-oiled machine. Everyone having the same information means you are able to formulate a cohesive strategy and run with it. Less time is spent in discussion and in trying to get each team member in line—your team can do better work and use it to drive more revenue.

Having the right information at your fingertips is key, but what you do with it is just as important. Our own customers report a 17% increase in productivity increase for Sales Reps using Personal Business Analytics. By making sure that you use the information to your advantage, you to can drive more revenue while spending less time on tasks that are killing your team’s productivity.

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Drive mobile selling with personal business analytics

Apr 2014/in /by

As mobile technology becomes ever more pervasive, enterprise sales managers have realized that having access to the right data, 24/7, no matter where they are, is an incredibly powerful tool for their sales teams. If it delivers the right business insights to the user, high-performing organizations can use mobility to increase deal size, decrease sales cycle timelines and profitably improve sales activity, according to Selling More with Mobile Solutions by Accenture.

The CSO Insights 2012 Sales Performance Optimization Study found that 97% of companies are actively using or starting to use tablet devices in their sales organization—and just about every business now realizes the upside of mobile. But a big problem for many companies is that they don’t have a targeted strategy for how their salespeople use smartphones and tablets, and nothing in place that will effectively drive mobile adoption so they can integrate is as part of their official workflow. To drive mobile selling, you need an app that can help salespeople:

  1. Maximize meeting effectiveness: Mobile apps that deliver business insights and are relevant specifically to the people in the meeting allow salespeople to maximize their opportunity by speaking only to what is important to their client.
  2. Collaborate and sell as a team: Having the ability to share critical business insights with the entire team means that everyone is on the same page. Being in sync means that the team can develop and refine selling strategies, become more efficient, and shorten the sales cycle.
  3. Access critical information on the spot: If they can immediately know what’s going on in their client’s business, anywhere, they can improve efficiency and save themselves from trying to hunt down actionable business insights after-the-fact. And by simplifying their workflow, they have more time to focus on closing deals.

Many enterprise apps struggle to gain adoption because many sales people can’t identify the big incentive: something that proves to their sales force that using mobile for more than just phone or text messages will win them more deals. Using personal business analytics on mobile means that salespeople have access to critical business insights at their fingertips—so no matter where they are, they can understand how to engage their customers about the critical events that are affecting them as they happen, helping them improve relationships, win more deals and drive more revenue.

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Hey Sales! Don’t Rely On Marketing To Make You Efficient

Apr 2014/in /by

A colleague in sales sent me a blog post by Mike Troutman the other day called, “Hey Marketers, Don’t Forget Your Biggest Customer.” In it, Troutman says that sales teams feel forgotten by marketers—but, as the marketing communications person here at FirstRain, I know how much time we in marketing spend trying to push content out specifically for the benefit of sales. And I know from talking to others in the industry that this disconnect is extremely common—and the implications of it are staggering to behold: 70% of marketing material is never used by the sales team, although 84% of marketers have uploaded collateral to their CRM. And 51% of sales teams say the biggest time waste in their day is trying to find collateral.

Setting my personal situation aside (I’ll deal with those sales folks later …), while reading Troutman discuss how salespeople are trying to find material they can use to drive more revenue, I couldn’t help but notice how similar that is to the challenge sales people experience in trying to find information they can use to find more opportunities, spot risk and really understand a customer’s business. Much like the salespeople in the article looking for usable collateral, many sales reps these days waste an incredible amount of time searching for customer insights that are really actionable.

In the content arena, Troutman notes that usually marketers just upload content to their company’s CRM, send an email alerting the sales team that something new is available, and that is that. That method assumes that “each salesperson has been trained and is competent in search and retrieval of collateral,” and the organizational structure of how the material is stored isn’t necessarily conducive to all users’ style.

The same is true with trying to find customer insights—but even more so. They’re out there, but throwing the salesperson into Google to find information that is relevant to them assumes that he or she is “competent in search and retrieval” of information. Even if he is particularly adept at search, the Web is just too big to see everything he needs to, and there’s too much noise for them to find the needle in a haystack they need to understand what drives their customer. To be able to drive more revenue, they need a solution that delivers relevant, timely customer insights that are personalized to the accounts they care about most—without them having to work to find it.

That’s exactly the problem that personal business analytics solve. The areas of interest are personalized to what they need to see and understand in order to drive more revenue. Customer insights from across the entire Web and social media are packaged up and delivered directly to the rep to the places they already are, whether that’s the company CRM, their email, or on their mobile device—whatever works best for them.

Personal business analytics deliver the sales teams “what they use and what is effective” and “reduce the time it takes to locate content”—the key things Troutman says marketers need to do to help their sales reps be more efficient and productive.

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Understand the demand side to increase sales productivity

Apr 2014/in , /by

In this day and age, where widespread distribution and globalization is a given for enterprises, just knowing who is selling in a particular geography isn’t enough. We see with our own customers in industries like manufacturing that a major shift is needd in how data are used to make decisions. In fact, as DISC Corp.’s Herm Isenstein points out in The Art and Science of Sales Forecasting in the Electrical Market, “in what sense is supply equals demand meaningful when we know distributors are located in nearly 1,400 counties and that… end customers are located in about 3,100 counties?”

Isenstein is talking about the electrical supply industry in particular, but the same principle applies to any company that sells into many different geographies. With distribution so broad, it’s foolish to assume that buyers in drastically different markets have the same buying triggers, problems and priorities—their demand is almost undoubtedly different. Isenstein says in his piece, “Identifying demand is the most crucial element for measuring performance where the action takes place, at the trading area level.” And that’s why, in order to increase sales and sales productivity, it’s important for sales reps to know what the demand side is thinking in their specific market.

It would be extremely difficult to find the detailed information a sales rep need to be able to understand a specific trading area without one pointed, go-to source, and in many organizations today, reps are sifting through hundreds of noisy sources, making them less productive than they would like. More than ever, it’s important for sales productivity and forecasting accuracy to be able to understand what buyers in a particular market are saying about a certain need or problem they have, because it will help them be more effective during customer meetings and more accurately forecast their sales.

Personal business analytics allow users to see trends the particular market/s they care about, as well as understand what their end-customers care about. For a company who has sales across the country (or the world), being able to personalize what a rep sees means they’re better able to discover opportunities on the ground in their particular market by understanding what that market cares about. Because we’re acutely aware of these dynamics, FirstRain customers experience tailored, relevant information through personal business analytics—delivering the information that Isenstein believes sellers need, but can’t currently get.

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Using Customer Intelligence to Diversify

Apr 2014/in , /by

In today’s hyper-growth, rapidly changing markets, companies diversify for many reasons. Maybe you are trying to expand into a new market, or have launched a new product. No matter what, you need to strike a balance between gaining net-new customers and expanding your footprint within current customers—and one of the most important things you need to have access to is in-depth, reliable customer intelligence.

Although you may have a lot of data points on your current customer, chances are you are probably not an expert on the different business lines of the company, go-to-market strategies, or specifically what their executive focus is. If it’s a new client in a new market or industry, then they will likely have vastly different challenges and care-abouts than what you’re used to.

To improve your sales and marketing efforts—and successfully enter a new market—you need customer intelligence “but transaction data doesn’t improve the customer experience unless you combine it with some other data to learn something new and useful,” according to CIO.com author Allen Bernard (@CIOUpdate). What large enterprise B2B companies have found is that by using a particular practice of Big Data, personal business analytics, you can have even more strategic conversations with customers by gaining true insight into their business—not based on click data, but reflective of the customers own voice and needs. You learn valuable things, including:

  • Who are they selling to? By understanding who their customers are and why their customers buy from them, you get insight into the big issues they face. The problem their product solves is likely a common one in their market.
  • What are the events that could critically affect their business? It could be any number of things, from weather phenomena to the release of an emerging technology. You need to anticipate opportunity and risk for your own sales, but knowing how your product can help them no matter what makes you a trusted partner.
  • What are the trends in their market? Knowing in what direction their market is headed is essential to provide value and win the sale. Your positioning for this new market may be very different that your previous one, and you need to be able to speak to how your product will help the customer not just now, but down the road as well.

Going into a new market blind rarely, if ever, ends well… so take advantage of the customer intelligence technology that’s now available to you and your teams. Make sure you’re always learning something new and useful that will lead you on a successful path.

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Using Customer Insights to Overcome the 57% Threshold

Mar 2014/in /by

This morning, the TAS Group held their ”Battling the 57%” webinar, hosted by their CEO, Donal Daly. Mr. Daly spoke about the changing sales process and how salespeople can use the Challenger method to react better to the buying process and close the sale.

The internet, and the generally wide availability of information, has drastically altered the traditional buying process. By the time they contact you, a buyer is 57% of the way through their  process, and have probably already started forming opinions of what solutions they think they want.

So it comes down to this: are you engaging the customer, or is the customer engaging you? Are you getting to them before that 57% threshold? As a seller, it’s up to you to create value—even if the client seems to be leaning away from you.

But how do you create value where the client sees none? The answer lies in truly understanding what’s moving your customers. Using customer insights and doing your research on a prospect will allow you to see how your solution will help them. It may also allow you to uncover challenges in their business they didn’t even know they had—and by creating that value for them (and showing them how your solution can solve their challenge), you’ll be seen as a trusted advisor, making them more inclined to do business with you.

Mr. Daly summed it up nicely: you want to “create, develop, pursue and win business that delivers mutual value for you and your customers.” By thoroughly understanding a customer’s business, you can uncover whether your solution is a good fit for them—and, too, whether they are a good fit for your solution. Everyone wants to make the sale, but doing your research and using customer insights up front will help you focus your efforts on the areas they’ll be most effective.

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Use Sales Insights to Send Emails Prospects Actually Read

Mar 2014/in /by

Much of the time, your first contact with a prospect will be through email. However, sending out shoddy messages that appear mass-produced and untailored to the specific business can wreak havoc on your sales productivity. You have to treat each email like it’s a conversation, because that’s how your prospect will be thinking about it. Sending out a generic template just won’t cut it.

For instance, a typical email may tout the company, talk about your services and end with a call-to-action. This could literally be sent out to anyone, and probably is. Instead, you need to do a better job of targeting it.

Sympathize With Your Prospect

In Inc., sales expert Geoffrey James notes that if you think about how your emails look from the customer’s perspective, it may start to make more sense as to why leads aren’t biting. Most likely, they’re asking, “what does this have to do with me?” They may be wondering why you are reaching out to them at all, and they may even be truly annoyed that you wasted their time with spam. In each case, you’ve all but lost your prospect before you’ve begun.

Prioritize Customer Research 

It may seem like a no-brainer, but you need to do some work figuring out who your prospect is before shooting off an email. Once again, a cursory look at their homepage probably won’t be enough. You want is to exceed their expectations, not barely meet them—so you need to dig deeper. Customer intelligence analytics allow you to not only see what your customer has been doing, but what’s going on in their marketplace.

How to Use Sales Insights to Write Messages

Generally, prospects are more likely to respond when a message is relevant to their interests. This means it’s best to contact someone who has been looking around your site. You should not only mention their presence on your page, but exactly what they looked at. However, intelligence gives you the details that can make a cold email work. For instance, it enables you to see trigger events that create new product needs. According to HubSpot, events like this can be an excellent way to open an email.

Now that you have a better idea of their industry, and what it takes to excel in this environment, you will have a much easier time getting into the client’s perspective and understanding what will compel them to respond to your email. Keep things simple. James suggests that you give examples, not just of businesses you’ve worked with, but what you’ve done for them. Even better, align this small pitch to their specific market niche.

Another tip HubSpot offers is that with the first email, you’re really looking for a response, not a sale. Try to establish yourself as a trustworthy source who cares about the outcome of their company rather than going after the pitch right away.

Other suggestions:

  • Start by saying something about them, not yourself. This will grab their attention. Now would be a good time to mention that big market event you learned about.
  • Leverage personal connections if you have them. These should also go near the top of your email. If a mutual colleague suggested you get in touch, absolutely mention this.
  • Keep it short. Prospects are busy people, and the best of us can be overwhelmed by an unbroken wall of text. Make it digestible, clear and direct.

When you take the time to understand your customers, you can write messages that they really respond to.

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