Big congratulations to our FirstRain product and data science team, for winning the Ventana Research “Marketing Excellence Award” for 2015! Driven by our recent Orion release, FirstRain was distinguished as a groundbreaker in Marketing Strategy and as an Essential Tool for Marketing Success by Ventana Research.
The annual Ventana Research 2015 Technology Innovation Awards recognizes companies and technologies that are continuing to innovate and utilize expertise to interact with customers and we are proud to be one of the recognized leaders amongst these!
The FirstRain platform is an analytics platform that empowers enterprise customers to deliver business-critical and actionable insights to departments, teams and individuals. Mark Smith, CEO and chief research officer at Ventana Research affirms, “Marketing needs up to date information as it assesses the market and takes action, and FirstRain’s platform exemplifies our idea of an essential tool for marketing success, through FirstRain, enterprises and especially marketing organizations are not only able to learn more about the marketplace, but they are also able to gain insights leveraging big data analytics for highly personalized, relevant and timely information for sales and marketing teams.”
FirstRain dramatically increases strategic insight by adding new families of business analytics and the ability to integrate and analyze internal company data with Web and social data.
“Ventana’s Operational Innovation Award for Marketing Excellence is a testament to the powerful business insights that we provide our customers through the FirstRain platform,” said Penny Herscher, president and CEO of FirstRain. “With FirstRain, marketers can unlock the value of internal company data with Web and social for disruptive analytics that drive smart business decisions.”
FirstRain Introduces Personal Business Analytics™ for Salesforce1
FirstRain’s Personal Business Analytics for Salesforce1 to be available this summer; It’s personal, it’s about your business and it drives revenue growth.
June 18, 2014 09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
SAN MATEO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–FirstRain, the leader in Personal Business Analytics™ that give every professional their own personal and persistent x-ray into their customers, markets, strategy and competition, today introduced Personal Business Analytics for Salesforce1. FirstRain’s Personal Business Analytics already provide executives with uniquely useful insights based on the company and business unit they work for, the role they have, the territory they are responsible for and the critical business drivers that accelerate growth. Now all this will be delivered in an intimate information experience within Salesforce1. Executives now have analytics that tell them what just happened in their customer’s business that they have to act on and what action to take next – right in the palm of their hand.
“The future of information is personal. We are now making Personal Business Analytics available to Salesforce1 users in this increasingly mobile-first world”
Millions of business professionals already use FirstRain to get their own personal, role-based analytics that provide unmatched and highly relevant details into the changing characteristics of their customers and markets, down to the line of business, product, vertical market and dynamic trends. FirstRain’s business analytics engine dynamically responds to developments detected in the global web and social media, combined with user’s changing business interests, to deliver the most relevant personal business information experience available.
FirstRain Personal Business Analytics will be available to customers via the FirstRain beta program. Within Salesforce1, professionals will now have the precise insights relevant to them and their business, so they can engage their key customers and immediately share key information with their team on Chatter – easily bringing the brightest minds together to work on their opportunity. And executives will quickly see in real time the opportunities and risks occurring in their territory alongside other critical CRM data.
“The future of information is personal. We are now making Personal Business Analytics available to Salesforce1 users in this increasingly mobile-first world,” said Penny Herscher, CEO of FirstRain. “Offering our products on Salesforce1 helps our customers be more deeply informed on the changes that directly impact their job, and their business, so they can make better decisions, develop smarter strategic plans, get closer to their customers, achieve greater sales and outwit their competition.”
FirstRain will be demoing the beta Personal Business Analytics App at the Salesforce1 World Tour in Dallas, Texas today, June 18th, 2014 as a Gold Partner, at booth #116.
About FirstRain
FirstRain is a pioneer and leader in Personal Business Analytics solutions for the enterprise. FirstRain’s mobile, cross-platform solutions provide sales, marketing and finance professionals analytics tuned to their specific company strategy and allow them to deeply understand their customer’s business and their markets. FirstRain’s patented, advanced analytics technology finds business-focused Web and social media and then integrates it seamlessly into the world’s premier CRM and social enterprise platforms, including Salesforce.com, Chatter, Microsoft SharePoint and Dynamics, Jive and Yammer. This intelligence is similarly incorporated into leading research platforms such as Fidelity.com, Dun & Bradstreet, Interactive Data and Mergent. Based in San Mateo, California, FirstRain also has offices in New York and Gurgaon, India.
Customer success stories are an important and necessary sales tool. Just like having references for any job interview, they aren’t going to make the sale but without good ones, it may cause a delay in the sales process. Yet, customer success stories are often cookie cutter in style and not engaging. Even worse, you may struggle to get your customers to approve them.
I’ve been working with companies on success stories across industries – from semiconductors to software development tools to software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions. I have experienced the frustration of writing a customer story only to have the customer not approve it, or worse, approve it and then pull it after its been published. There will be many customers who won’t share their brand value with you for fear of diluting it. There will be others that you simply don’t have the relationship with to “override” the policy of not doing them. But there will be customers where you do have the product and people relationships that gain you the necessary approvals. Make the most of these customers and seize the moment as your champion might move on. Most of all, tell a great story for your company and their customer.
Here are three tips from my recent experiences that I hope will help you tell a great customer story. Let the story begin!
Tell the story in your customer’s own words
Don’t fall into the trap of marketing speak! It’s easier to just write the problem, solution and benefits using all the company’s great messaging, but it’s dry and boring. Tell the story as if it were unfolding as you read it. And to do that you need to interview the key people and collect as many usable quotes as possible. Don’t forget to ask for their picture to make it even more engaging and realistic. I like what I see for pulling all three of these elements together in the customer case studies by RelateIQ, a Palo Alto, California-based start-up that is quickly becoming the go-to relationship intelligence solution for professionals seeking to build better relationships and make smarter decisions.
Use surveys to help gather facts and interesting user commentary
Not another survey! I know we’re asked to respond to surveys almost daily now. But companies who are SaaS providers are one of the best examples of where knowing if customers are successful is not just nice to have – it’s crucial to achieving very high renewal rates, a key metric for a SaaS company. These surveys are usually quite effective as they are often run internally by the customer to validate the ROI. Provided there are open ended questions, this can be a rich source of additional commentary from the users by incorporating direct quotes that can help bring authenticity to the success story and have it sound less like marketing speak. I have seen this work for myself while working on case studies such as Nuance Communications for FirstRain, a pioneer and leader in personal business analytics solutions for the enterprise.
If you hit the wall on permission, try new approaches
Beware of the marketing police! I always find it a bit awkward to coach people on how to get through the marketing controls on the use of their brand since I used to enforce them myself. The truth is every decision is a business decision and with the right case made by the right person, there are exceptions. There are many companies who have business reasons to want to work with their suppliers on telling their story. The keys are having senior relationships between the companies and finding the win-win scenario. Should you still hit the wall on permission, there’s a new approach that I really like if you have 50-100 customers to work with. Founded in 2007 and based in Emeryville, California, TechValidate solves the problem of extracting quantifiable operational and financial metrics from your customer base, and then instantly turning that data into usable, third party verified marketing materials.
Author:
Jan Willis founded Calibra in 2007 after holding senior marketing positions at Cadence Design Systems, Simplex Solutions, Synopsys, and HP and completing an MBA at Stanford University. Calibra is a B2B business consulting firm specializing in helping high-tech companies enhance their brand and accelerate the market adoption of their products. Its consulting practice includes whole product strategy, company and technology branding, strategic options analysis, industry alliances, and interim leadership.
As a thought leader selling solutions to enterprise sales leaders, Penny Herscher often gets asked about the trends that she sees in some of the world’s largest enterprise sales teams. Recently, a request came through with just one question: What is the most important shift in sales strategy, technology or process that you’ve implemented or observed in the past year?
Penny shared what she hears the most from our own customers, many of whom are themselves senior sales leaders at Fortune 500 companies. The insight that came to the forefront was that, in order to be successful and grow your business, you need to build trusted relationships with customers that bring real value. The buyer wants to know that you, as a seller, truly understand their pain points and their business needs. They don’t care about all the bells and whistles of the product—they care about what value it will bring to their business. This all but requires that you, and your product, provide year-round value to them—and the only way you can do that is to become intimately knowledgeable about their business. Of course, to do that successfully and stay productive, sales teams need the right tools that provide real-time insights to solve the business problems customers have.
Penny Herscher was featured this week in ringDNA’s 20 Top Sales Leaders Reveal Their Biggest Productivity Secrets. There are many other great sales thought leaders and practitioners who are quoted as well. Read on and learn from the best!
D&B’s Business Information Products Now Powered by FirstRain’s Advanced Analytics; Customers in Any Market Can Immediately Maximize Sales Opportunities
SHORT HILLS, N.J. & SAN MATEO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– D&B (NYSE:DNB), the world’s leading source of commercial information and insight on businesses, and FirstRain, a leading provider of customer insights for the enterprise, today announced a partnership to deliver a ground-breaking solution combining structured and unstructured business data and analytics. The solution will provide a 360-degree view of a company that unifies relevant social content with D&B’s leading commercial content in a simple and seamless manner that is easy to use and integrate into business applications, in near real time.
“As we continuously look for opportunities to strengthen our position as the market leader in B2B data intelligence, finding and identifying solutions that solve unmet customer needs is crucial to our success,” said Laura Kelly, Chief Product Officer, D&B. “The relationship with FirstRain will enable our customers to receive up-to-the-minute insights on prospects, customers, competitors and key markets, especially in today’s social age where companies have immediate needs for deep insight. FirstRain’s company and industry social analytics combined with D&B’s world-class structured data gives customers advanced warning of sales and growth opportunities in their markets, when and where they need it.”
Under a long-term strategic agreement, FirstRain provides D&B with customer and market intelligence, which D&B delivers through its world class solutions. The agreement with Silicon Valley-based FirstRain, an emerging leader in big data analytics, builds on D&B’s commitment to investing in and providing its customers with breakthrough and innovative services.
Going far beyond traditional news feeds, FirstRain big data analytics on unstructured information, including social media conversations on Twitter and blogs, deliver highly relevant, real-time insights on companies, markets and competitors to sales and marketing teams. FirstRain users have a superior understanding of their customer’s businesses, uncovering greater opportunities and risks, and ultimately driving smarter business decisions and accelerating growth.
“The integration of FirstRain’s analytics with D&B’s sales and marketing intelligence will enhance D&B’s profiles, setting them apart from commoditized products in the market,” said Harry Henry, VP & Practice Leader at Outsell, Inc. “This partnership allows D&B to offer relevant new content, from a wide range of sources including social media, to millions of users across different industries.”
D&B users now have access to FirstRain’s first-level analytics integrated directly within the D&B solutions including Hoovers, D&B360, D&B Direct and First Research®. The combination of D&B data and insight on more than 230 million businesses, 100 million business executives and three million corporate family trees linked via the D&B DUNS® Number with FirstRain’s real- time insights on customers and markets sets the standard for business data analytics.
“Our partnership with D&B is a tremendous milestone for FirstRain,” said Penny Herscher, CEO of FirstRain. “D&B is the global leader in business information and we are excited to bring the powerful insights that FirstRain extracts through real-time unstructured data analytics to their customer base through this partnership.”
About Dun & Bradstreet (D&B)
Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE:DNB) is the world’s leading source of commercial information and insight on businesses, enabling companies to Decide with Confidence® for 172 years. D&B’s global commercial database contains more than 230 million business records. The database is enhanced by D&B’s proprietary DUNSRight® Quality Process, which provides our customers with quality business information. This quality information is the foundation of our global solutions that customers rely on to make critical business decisions.
D&B provides two solution sets that meet a diverse set of customer needs globally. Customers use D&B Risk Management Solutions™ to mitigate credit and supplier risk, increase cash flow and drive increased profitability; and D&B Sales & Marketing Solutions™ to provide data management capabilities that provide effective and cost efficient marketing solutions and to convert prospects into clients by enabling business professionals to research companies, executives and industries.
FirstRain is a pioneer and leader in customer insights solutions for the enterprise. FirstRain’s cross-platform solutions provide sales, marketing and finance professionals with analytics tuned to their specific company strategy, allowing them to deeply understand their customer’s business and their markets. FirstRain’s patented, advanced analytics technology finds business-focused Web and social media and then integrates it seamlessly into the world’s premier CRM and social enterprise platforms, including Salesforce, Salesforce Chatter, Cisco WebEx Social, Microsoft SharePoint and Dynamics, Jive and Yammer. This intelligence is similarly incorporated into leading research platforms such as Fidelity.com, Interactive Data and Mergent. Based in San Mateo, California, FirstRain also has offices in New York and Gurgaon, India.
We’ve made a big fuss about what we’ve got going on at Dreamforce. But one thing that hasn’t gotten a whole lot of airtime is the Table Talk that our intrepid COO, YY Lee, is running on Tuesday. And we think it’s really interesting!
YY will lead a discussion about how enterprise mobility and BYOD have dramatically shifted the work-life landscape, giving enterprises an incredible opportunity to take advantage of how connected people are. With the amount of personal time people spend time on their smartphones and tablets, however, enterprises need to think about how they fit into the multitasking employee’s mobile world.
The discussion will cover the opportunities that the constantly connected environment presents to enterprises. She’ll address the differences between enterprise and consumer apps, what enterprise apps can learn from the consumer world and how to reconcile the two spaces to turn BYOD and multitasking into revenue for your company.
This topic is even more relevant now with the release of Salesforce One! So swing by her table to learn a thing or two about how to make a kick-ass enterprise mobile app.
Become a Mobile Hero: How to Turn BYOD and Multitasking into Revenue
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Market Development
Understanding your customers has never been more important than it is today. Customers have greater access to information than ever before, which means they have more choices and it’s more challenging to build long-lasting loyalty. But companies need to do this to retain clients long term and generate more revenue. Being customer-focused has its benefits for you as well.
Customer-centricity has four main requirements: recognizing and understanding the differences between each of your customers, realizing the quantifiable value in each individual client, learning who your high-value clients are and how to retain them and utilizing customer data to create a highly personalized experience. Although every person in your organization is responsible for improving customer centricity, your sales representatives need to establish themselves as strategic consultants who play a vital role in your customers’ businesses.
Moving Past “Sales” to Be Seen as an Essential Partner
Sales professionals are usually extroverted and are great at closing deals. But what happens after the sale? Are your reps continuing to check in with clients, or is their contact information just sitting in your CRM? Customer-centric organizations know how to move past the strictly sales mentality to form lasting relationships with their clients. These reps aren’t just people who sell new products and services—they’re viewed as critical business partners who can advise and direct. But your team can’t accomplish this without actionable information.
“A successful salesperson knows how to strike a balance between the science of being a salesperson and the art to match their customer needs,” said Nima Niakan, FirstRain Fellow.
He added that FirstRain can help organizations embrace different methodologies, such as TAS and Challenger, to ensure any information that comes into the organization is analyzed and directed to the right sales rep—the most relevant information in the right platform, categorized under a particular selection based on the methodology. This allows the salesperson to quickly take action on this information.
“FirstRain ups the game for the sales rep and helps them be more efficient with that ‘science’ side of the equation,” Niakan stated.
Bridging the Gap Between Salespeople and Strategic Consultants
While actionable science may seem like a lofty goal to some, companies can’t become more customer-oriented without the right data. So how can salespeople transform their enterprise relationships into more of a partnership?
“By understanding their customers’ ecosystem, knowing what legislative, regulatory and macroeconomic issues are facing their customer and working backwards from there to see how to positions and time the deal to assure it matches the customer’s priorities,” Niakan said.
It can be challenging to establish this type of relationship with your customers, but it pays off in the long run. Being viewed as an essential consultant has benefits in the sales process after the relationship has been developed.
“Once the customer thinks of you as a key partner, now they will come to your first, before looking to a competitor of yours,” he added.
After this trusted status has been gained, the rep can leverage his or her knowledge of the customer to direct clients toward the company’s solutions. This allows customers to get where they want faster, more efficiently and have a desired impact by utilizing your products and solutions.
“The relationship will open a channel for the customer to ask for new features and products that put you in the lead and help you get more ingrained inside the customer’s organization,” Niakan stated.
