Tag Archive for: sales intelligence

Posts

Relying too much on LinkedIn?

Sep 2016/in Competitive Intelligence, FirstRain, Market Intelligence /by Danielle Ricci

Sometimes it seems that executives change positions faster than your morning coffee can brew. However, even when executive changes affect your business directly, you might be the last to know.

It can be overwhelming, keeping track of the perpetually changing status for management in your companies of interest – customers, partners, or competitors. Often we are forced to just rely on the traditional online professional networking platforms like LinkedIn, for professional updates.

Unfortunately, LinkedIn is dependent on user inputs for updates, and much of its value as a business intelligence tool is stunted by a trend involving executive level professionals neglecting their LinkedIn presence.

How Professionals are Using LinkedIn

LinkedIn is meant to encourage connections, learning, and sharing. Users of LinkedIn build a professional identity online, a concept inspired by traditional paper resumes, to build networks with colleagues and classmates while maintaining a presence in the job market.

For Market Research

In addition to its most famous uses as a job-search tool and professional social network, LinkedIn claims you can find “the latest news, inspiration, and insights you need to be great at what you do.”

Motivated by the claim, LinkedIn users have been applying the network to marketing and sales research. A solid 41% of B2B marketers consider LinkedIn their default social platform, as indicated in a 2015 Social Media Marketing industry report.

For Building Brand Awareness

It’s true that LinkedIn is brimming with information. Companies eagerly post content, hoping to hop on the social marketing wagon and build brand awareness. You can cultivate this awareness with LinkedIn when you have a well-maintained company page, augmented with equally well-maintained executive profiles. However, LinkedIn tends to be biased since a company’s own social media experts curate and manage company-specific information.

When Executives Don’t Give LinkedIn What it Needs to Succeed

Although executive profiles are a positive tool for brand cultivation on LinkedIn, many C-level employees do not maintain their profiles, if they have one at all. A creator of multiple start-ups, Shaun McConnon, publicly boasts about not being on LinkedIn. Those top executives who do have LinkedIn often neglect this presence to the extent of violating the main rule for LinkedIn success: always keep your profile updated.

According to recruiter Andrew Johnson, not maintaining your LinkedIn profile could be for a number of reasons, including:

It rarely crosses their mind, due to infrequently signing in.
They prefer to wait for the 3-6 month mark.
They wish to avoid their “network” demanding opportunities, requests, favors, and so forth.

Here at FirstRain, we noticed a rising trend in executive-level employees neglecting or forgoing LinkedIn profiles. If you follow us on Twitter, you have seen some examples of Management Changes across various industries:

Event detected 8/23/16 and tweeted on 8/30/16

Since LinkedIn updates originate from the users themselves, this trend of slow to non-existent updating throws a major wrench into the network’s use as a timely and useful research tool to understand management turnover.

Event detected on 8/5/16 and tweeted on 8/10/16

To see more of our management turnover updates, head over to our Twitter page.

How Does this Affect You?

If you are relying on LinkedIn alone, you might be missing top-level changes in companies of interest. Such changes often indicate a shift in direction in terms of company control, power, culture, or even a combination.

In sales or account management, an executive change can act as a catalyst for relationship development. Management changes can cause previously out-of-reach companies to become more hospitable or better aligned with your product or service. On the other side, if a change stems from a negative cause, think layoffs or poor leadership, you may consider the change a reason to contact your account.

At the end of the day, meaningful and valuable business relationships are possible only when you know your accounts intimately and executive level changes are a key part of this.

Don’t Jump Ship, Just Grab Another Oar

LinkedIn isn’t sinking and there’s no reason to jump. Instead, simply supplement the network with a tailored research tool. FirstRain presents key insights on your customer, competitors, and industries of interest in a streamlined manner so you receive the updates you rely on without the noise. Unlike other business analytics engines, FirstRain incorporates the business web and social media content for a one-stop shop of business intelligence.

Management changes are highlighted in at-a-glance panels and cover management and executive hires, departures or internal moves within a company, and board changes. Management Change analytics include senior level hires and retirements, executive promotions and resignations, and even plans for departure. To easily consume these key insights, the changes are presented for a specific company, account, industry, or topic of interest and can be further filtered down by your choosing.

Events detected 8/10-18 on and tweeted on 8/18/16

Where LinkedIn is lacking, there’s FirstRain to help.

Want to see just how FirstRain fits into your day? Here’s a video for those of you in sales. For those of you in marketing, read this overview.

Have thoughts you want to share or questions you need to ask? We’d love to hear from you.

Market Trends: The Hunt for Revenue Streams

Apr 2016/in Competitive Intelligence, Sales Intelligence /by Danielle Ricci

This is part of the FirstRain Persona Series.

Every company needs an executive leader with a lion mentality. One that won’t shy away from a tough deal, someone that has mastered an intuitive awareness of how and when to nurture new business, and one that can lead the rest of the sales pack with a clear vision. And across many enterprise C-suites, Sales now has a direct seat at the table.

With today’s fast moving digital marketplace, the objectives of a sales executive continue to transform the traditional sales role. Sales responsibilities are inheritably linked to revenue goals and the tasks have brought on new members to the C-suite, such as the Chief Sales Officer, Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Revenue Officer. To keep things simple in this persona post, we will refer to these C-Suite level lions as the Chief Sales Officer.

Today, CSOs are constantly leveraging a sales strategy and market trends that will create the most impact for the enterprise, evaluating ways for new revenue streams, analyzing market disruptions and always, always on the hunt for business opportunities.

Clearly, the role today involves more than managing sales teams and includes strategic goals such as finding niche market opportunities and enterprise solutions to better position the company’s products and services. With characteristics of a true pioneer, they are always steps ahead and on the quest to competently execute a sales plan and turn value propositions into business deals.

In the Venture Beat article, “The Rise of the Chief Revenue Officer: Silicon Valley’s new secret sauce,” the author states, “A great CRO must be able to wedge into any aspect of the company to lay the underpinnings of a scalable revenue engine and tune everything for execution.” CSOs must continually assess and re-assess the current marketplace and then look for avenues to implement acute strategic business analysis to meet and exceed revenue goals.

Identifying what will create the strongest impact for the enterprise is the first step; deciding what steps to take next requires setting both, short-term and long-term goals; does the company continue to make deals more profitable and lower cost of sales, does it need to expand current contracts or scale products and service offerings into new industries, does the company leverage cross selling, does the company win in competitive situations, does the company provide thought leadership, does the company create sustainable teams and of course, they must execute.

Quarter after quarter CSOs must measure activities, technology and marketing strategy campaigns and understand what works, what doesn’t and ensure that they are introducing their products with the most compelling value proposition and approach into the market. The mindset is results-driven and efficiently integrating activities that will ignite results, both short-term and long-term is a must.

In addressing the need for a CSO, Greg Alexander of Sales BenchMark Index (SBI) writes, “A CSO understands how change ripples throughout an organization. They understand how decisions affect organizations, markets, product lines, competitors and business units.” – CSO’s leadership style must demonstrate an intuitive understanding of industry analysis, region, contract deals and clearly match them to the appropriate team members that will get the job done. They must always strategically seek, nurture and create business relationships for the profitability and product expansion of the business.

CSOs must find ways to connect the dots within an enterprise and bring more revenue streams in a constantly changing market. Relentlessly, they solicit new ideas to approach more streams of business and strengthen value propositions within different industries, often partnering with the Chief Marketing Officer to present the strongest, sometimes aggressive, go-to-market-strategy into play. Together, they will assess the strength of a business deal, with the aid of marketing campaigns, and deploy salespeople to initiate contact, and work together with product development to ensure that the product presentation maximizes value factors for the end markets.

Today’s CSOs must understand disruptions and their competitors, and be agile with a clear mindset, bold attitude and a keen insight of the best marketing strategy. They are responsible for connecting the dots; finding sales intelligence and new value propositions to better target go-to-markets and finding ways to move enterprise solutions forward, making the business profitable and expanding value in the product offering.

Partnering with other members of the C-suite is crucial to the successful growth of the enterprise. To transcend value through different industries in today’s digital marketplace, CSOs need competitive intelligence tools that show them the way, like FirstRain, that uses modern day technology not only to predict business opportunities but rather align business deals with real customer needs. FirstRain’s dynamic platforms aligns:

industry targeted coaching for sales reps with reasons to call and reasons to check-in
market analysis intelligence that identifies threats and accelerators that will leverage sales teams’ agility around business deals
industry knowledge to better position sales deals, that is intermingled with internal and external content
trigger events of when deals require attention or when a new target and acquisition plan is taking place

The responsibility for the growth and acquisition of new business is heavy, but with the successful integration of competitive intelligence tools and a solid marketing strategy, CSOs can propel a company forward.

CSOs do a lot of talking to nurture business relationships, but at the end of the day, their role is all about measurable results. True, successful sales leaders have a sixth sense of where profitability and business development must stand within their company’s initiatives, and partnering with sales intelligence tools that deliver them a cunning, comprehensive view of their customers and markets, allows them to execute on their sales acumen with real smart data.

Like a lion on the hunt, sales executives must have an acute awareness of their environment, and understand what small step will cause a disruption, when it is best to go in for the kill and when it is best to act patiently and wait for a bigger meal.

To read additional posts on FirstRain buyer Personas:

FirstRain Named Key Partner in Oracle’s Ecosystem to Support Customer Success in the Cloud

Oct 2015/in Enterprise Solutions, FirstRain News, Sales Intelligence /by Danielle Ricci

FirstRain is proud to have been named one of Oracle’s key ISV partners as part of Oracle’s Partner ecosystem expansion announcement at this week’s Oracle Open World (#OOW2015) annual conference. In support of helping customers maximize ROI from its Oracle Cloud Applications, our newest offering, FirstRain for Oracle Sales Cloud provides subscribers on-the-go access to real-time, relevant insights into the customers, competitors and markets they care about most. With FirstRain, Oracle Sales Cloud users are coached on who to call and what to say using advanced analytics and are able to quickly stay current on the critical changes impacting their customer’s business and end markets in a simple, elegant format directly in their Oracle Sales Cloud workflows.

oracle

You can read the full press release on the Oracle website or you can visit the FirstRain for Oracle Sales Cloud listing here. What to learn more? Please contact us for a demo!

Day in the Life of Sales, Powered with FirstRain

Aug 2015/in Enterprise Solutions, Sales Intelligence /by Danielle Ricci

FirstRain understands sales. Who should I be calling today? What should I say to attract their attention? Is my team prepared for that meeting? Are we all on the same page? How is my competition doing? What are they pitching? How do I intersect the value proposition with my customer’s needs? These are the questions that run through your mind every day. We got answers.

FirstRain gives you exactly the key information you need when you need it. Find new opportunities, develop and maintain key relationships with your customers, and ultimately close more deals.

Walk through a day in the life of a salesperson and gain a real-time understanding of the powerful information at your fingertips as a FirstRain user.

Collaborate, get smarter, and win.

Staying Ahead of Sales Mega-Trends: Growth Through Learning

Jul 2014/in Sales Intelligence /by Danielle Ricci

This is the final part of a 4-part series addressing how Personal Business Analytics help our customers respond to the emerging mega-trends set forth by McKinsey on the Salesforce blog.

Growth through learning

These days, the market can change so much and so quickly that those who can’t keep up will lose out to those who can. According to McKinsey’s mega-trends, “collaborative technologies and lower experimentation costs are game-changers for business economics” and the “premium today is on learning quickly, not planning.”

But to really get value from learning from every customer interaction, companies need to be much more agile. From their supply chain operations, to human resources, to how their sales people adapt to changing customer situations, every group should be ready and able to pivot and shift on short notice.

When looking at learning specifically for sales teams, there is more data available than ever before, as the amount of content on the Web has boomed. Today, insights can be found in all the nooks and crannies of the web—but many sales intelligence tools only look at a small subset of content available, leaving sales teams with the same insights as their competitors or forcing them to have to spend valuable selling time using non-professional tools like Google to find what they need. As McKinsey previously outlined, in a world where sellers have to keep up with highly-networked super buyers, the emphasis on learning can easily turn to catastrophe if it means that employees are spending too much time searching for the information they need.

To meet this need and stay on top of this mega-trend of “growth through learning,” FirstRain customers are using very personalized information experiences across almost every business function: supply chain organizations use it to track market shifts and spot risk; human resources stays on top of trends in hiring processes; marketers get ahead of emerging industry trends and sales teams grow revenue by maximizing “learning from every customer or potential customer interaction” through insights that intelligently guide them through their sales cycles.

Agility and understanding go hand-in-hand, and having a solution that makes you both smarter and more flexible can change the game.

Staying Ahead of Sales Mega-Trends: Consumer Expectations

Jul 2014/in Sales Intelligence /by Danielle Ricci

This is part 3 of a 4-part series addressing how Personal Business Analytics help our customers respond to the emerging mega-trends set forth by McKinsey on the Salesforce blog.

B2C-inspired customer expectations

With the proliferation of mobile in consumers’ everyday lives, as well as increased expectation of BYOD workplaces, both B2B employees and customers are coming to expect the same level of personalization that they get as consumers. In order to meet these B2C-inspired consumer expectations, “sales leaders need to develop frictionless and personalized models to connect with the customer across any channel.”

The need to understand how to really connect with your customers has led to the rise of CRM and enterprise collaboration platforms, but employees tend to resist change in their existing workflows—which can result not only in stagnating customer relationships but also in slowing sales cycles. The answer is to place intelligent guidance right where sales already lives, while providing value-based information stickiness in the tools you need them to use. This can be done with very specific, granular insights based on their role, product lines they sell, regions they cover, industry focus and market and competitor relationships.

Connecting with your customer anywhere, anytime is a priority—and as our FirstRain usage stats show across some of the biggest global sales organizations, mobile is the fastest growing platform to connect sellers with buyers’ needs. But for many organizations, gathering the customer intelligence needed to turn the sales team into customer experts is time-consuming. They are simply unable to create very personal experiences with basic sales intelligence tools they may have previously invested in, many of which don’t even have native mobile apps. Consumers today have access to almost everything they need on their mobile devices, from banking to finding their next date, so consumer expectations now mean having the same experience when it comes to customer intelligence. They want their phone to help them build better relationships with their customers so they can win more deals; so, when selecting a tool to match the needs of these sellers, consider:

Are your current sales intelligence tools available as highly personal solutions in both native mobile apps, as well as integrated into enterprise workflows like CRM, enterprise portal and collaboration platforms?
Can your sales teams quickly create a very personal and intelligent view into their full customer revenue cycle, from initial sale to renewal?
Are you meeting consumer expectations by giving them specific, granular insights based on their role, product line, region, industry, market and competitor relationships?

Drop us a note if you’d like to learn more about enabling your sales teams with frictionless and personalized views that help them connect with your customers.

Staying Ahead of Sales Mega-Trends: New Behaviors

Jul 2014/in Sales Intelligence /by Danielle Ricci

This is part 2 of a 4-part series addressing how Personal Business Analytics help our customers respond to the emerging mega-trends set forth by McKinsey on the Salesforce blog.

Micro-segments, macro-behaviors

Today, shifting buyer demographics are forcing companies to change their go-to-market strategies. For example, they must reflect the new buying behaviors that are emerging as millennials outnumber Gen-Xers and as cities in emerging economies contain the majority of new urban consumers globally. These shifts are leading simultaneously to more granular geographic opportunities and new but shared global behaviors. In order to be competitive moving forward, companies will need to develop strategies and philosophies that are flexible to meet both sets of needs.

These shifts are why FirstRain customers are leveraging personal business analytics to help their sales teams stay on top of the trends that are happening in their customers’ target markets—down to spending patterns. They need to know what’s top of mind for the consumers their own customers are targeting—is it security, ease of use, cost—and monitor those things based on how their own solutions can provide value down the line. What we are seeing more and more is that business professionals need a very dialed-in view of their customers’ customer, down to the micro-segment they are targeting. Getting specifics is difficult due to the amount of information available on the web today.

Using analytics to see emerging trends while they are still in their nascent stages is nothing new to large B2B companies, but when it’s delivered with intelligent guidance to sales so they know exactly what to do next, all sizes of company can develop a go-to-market strategy that is agile and responsive. And when they are the first to see what’s coming and adjust accordingly, they will always be one step ahead of the competition.

Staying Ahead of Sales Mega-Trends: Super Buyers

Jul 2014/in Sales Intelligence /by Danielle Ricci

This is part 1 of a 4-part series addressing how Personal Business Analytics help our customers respond to the emerging mega-trends set forth by McKinsey on the Salesforce blog.

Highly-networked super buyers

According to McKinsey, new technologies are making gathering information—and processing it—easy and cheap, resulting in a community of “super-user” buyers, who interact with and influence each other by learning from each others’ challenges and solutions. In an age where social media is prevalent and options for whatever products you need are easy to find—74% of B2B decision makers are using LinkedIn for business reasons, while 42% use Twitter—sales leaders today need to deeply understand context, provide relevant answers to customers’ questions, and shape their customers’ thinking in order to improve the quality and frequency of customer engagements – and win.

So how can sales leaders achieve the same information experience that buyers have, but from the seller’s point-of-view? Only with powerful tools that scan the entire web for sales-driving insights can they become “super-sellers” and trusted advisors in the eyes of their buyers. It’s clear that without targeted, role-based enterprise tools, the noise and information overload from consumer-grade solutions is just too much. As many of our customer success stories demonstrate, having a dynamic, 360-degree view of customers helps sellers in verticals like technology and communications understand exactly what their own customers’ challenges are—along with WHOM and HOW they should engage. Reaching B2B decision-makers is not an easy task, so when you get there you must be well-equipped to strengthen those relationships with meaningful conversations that both teach and influence their buying decisions.

Whether a sales team needs to know about Data Center adoption trends, government regulations, or changing industry buying practices, getting the right breadth and depth of content and insights about their customers is the first step to adding value for these highly-networked super buyers.

Ask yourself: in order to go head-to-head with these new super buyers, are your sales teams easily able to:

Identify and attach themselves to your customers’ most important initiatives?
Know what’s top-of-mind for executives, so they’re prepared to add value in sales discussions?
Truly understand the most disruptive market changes in your customer’s business ecosystem?

If the majority of them are not, tell us why!

Use Sales Insights to Send Emails Prospects Actually Read

Mar 2014/in Sales Intelligence /by Danielle Ricci

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.

Keep training consistent to create sales superheroes

Jan 2014/in Sales Intelligence /by Danielle Ricci

Training your salespeople is vital to the continuing success of any business. Even if they can’t turn back time by flying around the world in reverse, sales superheros can turn a bad pitch into a closed deal. In a rapidly changing world, it’s a mistake to assume that your best sales reps don’t need any more training. Whether your salespeople are veterans or just entering the world of sales, it’s necessary to provide them with the training they need to best represent your company. Training sales reps is important for:

Improving knowledge of your company: You want your reps to be evangelists for your business, but they’ll be duds without background information that gives them a good story to tell.

Clarifying responsibilities: Increase the efficiency of your team by ensuring they understand how their day-to-day activities affect the company as a whole.

Increasing product knowledge: Give reps a reason to get excited about the products they’re selling. Not to mention there’s nothing more off-putting to potential buyers than a sales rep who doesn’t know everything about the products they’re touting.

Knowing your customers: Part of sales training should be devoted not just to your own products, but your customer base. Use big data analytics to plug yourself into your customer’s world.

Enhancing skills: This the No. 1 reason for training. It’s vital to be 100 percent confident in your products and your market, but if you lack the skills to wow your prospect, none of that information is worthwhile.

Here are some ideas for training your sales people:

Hire a trainer

Most businesses can benefit from hiring a trainer. However, be careful that you hire the right person, according to Geoffrey James for Salesforce. Different professionals have different areas of expertise. If they don’t have what you need, the investment won’t be worthwhile.

Train consistently

Make development of sales staff a part of every sales meeting. Try to set a goal for how much time you’ll spend on it. According to Caron Beesley on the government’s Small Business Administration website, one training session is rarely sufficient. Make sure your reps are up-to-date on the state of the market and even new research that would be beneficial in sales tactics.

Remember competitors

An often overlooked way to increase the success of your sales team is to make sure they know your competitors as well as they know your company. As Beesley says, it’s a good idea to encourage role playing exercises that involve competitive selling techniques.

Make training part of your routine

Have sales reps incorporate training into their day by encouraging them to share information via social media or over group lunches.

Page 1 of 412 3 4

Tag Archive for: sales intelligence

Posts

Market Trends: The Hunt for Revenue Streams

FirstRain Named Key Partner in Oracle’s Ecosystem to Support Customer Success in the Cloud

Day in the Life of Sales, Powered with FirstRain

Staying Ahead of Sales Mega-Trends: Growth Through Learning

Staying Ahead of Sales Mega-Trends: Consumer Expectations

Staying Ahead of Sales Mega-Trends: New Behaviors

Staying Ahead of Sales Mega-Trends: Super Buyers

Use Sales Insights to Send Emails Prospects Actually Read

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives

About Us

Resources

Support

Community