What are the factors to consider when choosing a Sales Intelligence solution?

The process of acquiring a sales intelligent package is an investment you should approach with caution. Your choice should help you generate more and better leads as well as convert potential clients into long-term ones.

Sales intelligence technology develops your sales in a relevant and targeted way. They keep you alert on what is happening in your industry. As such, you can take the suitable actions at the right time.

Not all solutions are the same, and you need to be specific in what you’re looking for. Here are specific considerations for your sales intelligence solution.

1. How Often Will You Update Your Data?

A good portion of data present in a company is obsolete within one year. This is a good reason to ensure the technology you adopt has a regular updating system. You should aim at keeping information up-to-date to remain relevant to sales canvassing.

2. How Will You Avoid Data Duplication?

If in your database you already have some suggested leads, you don’t want a solution that’ll duplicate the same information. Ask the vendor whether his tool can filter your database to avoid doubling-up. This should well be established before the installation of the software.

You shouldn’t have to sort data manually afterward.

3. Is the Solution Compatible With Your CRM?

Most businesses have a CRM system they use to canvass for business.  The sales intelligence solution you choose should be compatible with your CRM. One way to install the solution is as a stand-alone interface not connected to CRM.

The other most commonly used way of installing the solution is encapsulating it in your CRM system. This integration benefits you directly from the CRM functions through a shared interface. The approach is more practical as it integrates the data needed by the sales team.

The team doesn’t have to keep moving from one interface to another in search of the data they need. This eliminates the risk of data loss and time wastage. Having a system that provides information in real time is best in increasing efficiency.

4. How Does it Collect Data and Information?

How your sales intelligence tool collects information can help your sales team or pollute it with inappropriate information. Ideally, the software should gather information from various sources like social networks, crowdsourcing, and trawling the web. However, too much information can be challenging to sort and use appropriately.

Varied information enriches your company by letting you know what’s happening around you. Afterward, you can evaluate the potential of the information by their context. Eventually, you can determine the list of hot leads ready to be contacted.

Not all solutions you come across have this advanced technology at their disposal. Most of them use basic algorithms that search based on keywords. This leaves you with the task of sorting out the information to pick what’s relevant.

Remember to check the scope of sources your software uses, and the technology it employs in data collection.

What are the benefits of Sales Intelligence solutions?

Sales intelligence solutions are designed to help the sales team perform their job better. The positive impacts of Sales intelligence are felt through:

1. Higher Productivity

The intelligence tools can automatically prioritize follow-ups. They can also categorize leads to qualification-based and value-based groups. This helps to lessen the amount of time they spend in manual parsing that sometimes leads to unqualified leads.

2. Rewarding Conversations

As a retail trader, intelligence tools help you understand your prospects better. From the perspective of a customer, it’s annoying when a salesperson doesn’t understand your needs. The conversation will revolve around the product, instead of the buyer’s preferences and goals.

Sales intelligence shows sales reps the areas where most customers will be most responsive. Conversations should be steered towards those areas, mining for value around those points.

3. Smarter Sales Strategies

Sales intelligence is vital to decision-makers. It distills detailed insights from databases that characterize their department. From these insights, the sales manager will be in a better position to engage prospects.

They can come up with strategies to improve lead conversion ratios and consequently increase sales.

What is Lead Generation?

Lead Generation is the initiation of consumer interest or enquiry into products or services of a business. Leads can be created for purposes such as list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for sales leads. The methods for generating leads typically fall under the umbrella of advertising, but may also include non-paid sources such as organic search engine results or referrals from existing customers.

Who are the leads?

A lead usually is the contact information and in some cases, demographic information of a customer who is interested in a specific product or service. There are two types of leads in the lead generation market: sales leads and marketing leads.

Sales leads are generated on the basis of demographic criteria such as FICO score (United States), income, age, household income, psychographic, etc. These leads are resold to multiple advertisers. Sales leads are typically followed up through phone calls by the sales force. Sales leads are commonly found in the mortgage, insurance and finance industries.

Marketing leads are brand-specific leads generated for a unique advertiser offer. In direct contrast to sales leads, marketing leads are sold only once. Because transparency is a necessary requisite for generating marketing leads, marketing lead campaigns can be optimized by mapping leads to their sources.

An investor lead is a type of a sales lead. An investor lead is the identity of a person or entity potentially interested in participating in an investment, and represents the first stage of an investment sales process. Investor leads are considered to have some disposable income that they can use to participate in appropriate investment opportunities in exchange for return on investment in the form of interest, dividend, profit sharing or asset appreciation. Investor lead lists are normally generated through investment surveys, investor newsletter subscriptions or through companies raising capital and selling the database of people who expressed an interest in their opportunity. Investor Lead lists are commonly used by small businesses looking to fund their venture or simply needing expansion capital that was not readily available by banks and traditional lending sources.