Sales Intelligence - BizKonnect
As we all know, the traditional approach of reaching to your prospects by cold calling is very less effective and costly. Cold calling/emailing approach just focuses on the volume of the data and shoots blindly, hoping that those will hit correctly to at least a few. In today’s world, where all companies and individuals are keeping their web footprint, much more intelligent and effective approach should be used to know your prospects and customers. Sales Intelligence is a combination of technologies, applications & practices to offer sales (or marketing) people gather data relevant to their company’s solution and target prospects.
Sales Intelligence requires to pull out relevant focused information from the big data that is available. The data is available on the web as well as there is a huge data available with you as well for your current customers. One of the key aspects that Sales intelligence focuses on is the ‘Customer Relationship Management’ (CRM) .This area of expertise is all about maintaining a steady interaction between the company & the potential or current customer, so that the consumer or buyer of the product is continuously in touch with the strategies & other details (such as share prices , profits & new policies) of the company. So it follows that an analysis about the customer history has to be processed in order to know exactly what product requirements they have in mind. And finally this information is transferred by the Sales Intelligence group to the ‘Sales’ division of the company or the organization who make ample use of this vital ‘subject matter’ about the products and business prospers (or at least catches the people’s eye!).
Consumer behaviour is an important aspect of this segment (SI). It involves exploring the basic tendencies & inclinations of people towards buying a particular product or choosing the company of their choice. Terms like ‘cross-selling’ or ‘up-selling’ are key words that need to be defined here.Cross selling (or up-selling) refers to providing an additional, more expensive or up-graded product in addition to the product already being promoted. This ‘high profile’ product may be decided upon by analysing consumer behaviour or attitudes of clients.
The Sales and Marketing intelligence also focuses on analysing the market before you enter the market. Once you define the target profile then SI helps you get more information about these target prospect companies as well as decision makers in these companies. There are tools and technologies providing complete technology map, competition presence, likings of the decision makers, social presence of the company and individuals. There are companies who provide light sales intelligence like technology users lists, contact lists of the decision makers. There are many who provide deeper sales intelligence like Organization charts, some map these with your connections and technology insights. Some companies provide complete BANT ( Budget Authority Need and Timeline ) report. These details make the intelligence really actionable. This helps to qualify and prioritize the prospects, whom to approach first based on BANT qualification. This also helps in sending personalized messaging. The sales intelligence supports the recent sales and marketing approach of ABM ( Account Based Marketing ).
This, in a nutshell is what the dynamic field of ‘Sales Intelligence’ is all about. There is no end to the possibilities in this sector and like in every other field of expertise, additions & deletions will continue to be made with the intention of making ‘leaps & bounds’ and making the world a better place. The recent technology advancements like Natural Language Processing, Machine learning are making this field even more dynamic and effective.