™
Join over 20,000 readers!
Compare Sales Software
Sales Follow-up
Sales Tracking Software
Sales Enablement
Lead Activity Tracking
SalesTool Talk Newsletter: July 30 Issue
By now you've not only heard of Twitter, but may have even started tweeting everything from what you had for lunch to your latest company news. Over on LinkedIn, you've likely had your professional info up and running for a while now, reconnecting with colleagues, clients and partners old and new - joining groups and sharing connections. And while you might be saving Facebook for the personal realm, you're still sharing your interests and news with the world.
So stop and think: Most likely, every single one of your potential customers is doing the same thing. Even the C-Level suite continues to join, tweet, post and share at an accelerating rate.
As a sales professional, you’re faced with an exploding social Web that equates to a wealth of insight into your leads and prospects. But it's also a huge time-sucker, and as it keeps growing, your ability to keep a clear view of your pipeline becomes more and more difficult.
How Well Do You Know Your Prospects
Its possible to sell smarter with SalesView
Smarter Selling in a Sales 2.0 World
John Cousineau, President of Innovative Information, Inc.
I had a conversation recently with John Cousineau of Innovative Information. We were discussing his sales tool 'Amacus' and the proposition that it can empower sales professionals in new ways. We both agreed there is a new paradigm shift underway and underlying that shift is the use of new, smarter tools for selling.
I asked John if he would describe, in his view, what this new paradigm of Smart Selling is all about, why its needed, and how it manifests itself in the end results of one's sales efforts.
As he describes it, a smart selling tool would provide feedback to Reps based on what prospects do, not what prospects say. It would then aggregate that feedback into productivity metrics that help Reps discover their own best practices. I think you'll find it to be provocative.
A NEW PARADIGM OF PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS
FOR SELLING B2B
Give sales people feedback that helps the smart ones sell smarter
Sales Productivity is a top business concern of CEOs. Something’s clearly not working. Industry studies show that quota attainment is down. Sales Reps are working harder, ramp times for new hires are increasing, win rates are declining, and more effort’s required in the sell cycle to get buying decision.
Over 50% of all reps aren’t making quota and turnover rates in the US are at an all time high. It’s getting more and more expensive to sell business-to-business and everyone’s patience is wearing thin.
There are increasing pressures from the executive suite for hard evidence that the information and tools given to sales people are used, affect practices, and impact results. New and better information on how to prospect smarter is becoming available. By itself, such new info is valuable. What’s lacking, however, is feedback showing the sales impact of sales investments in systems, information, and conversations.
InsideView has partnered with the leading CRM providers, offering this native integration of SalesView within salesforce.com, Oracle CRM On Demand, Microsoft, Landslide, SugarCRM and NetSuite. SalesView is offered in several editions, including FREE (integrated with the above CRM systems), PRO (for individual sales professionals) and TEAM (full-featured, enterprise edition for sales and marketing teams.)
Common uses of SalesView include:
- List building: SalesView compiles information from multiple sources and identifies relationships that are critical to selling at all levels of an organization, from the CEO and board members down to line-of-business directors and managers.
- Prospecting: SalesView removes the hassle of searching traditional contact databases and instead connects the dots for you so you can connect and engage with the most targeted and researched prospects at any given time.
- Lead qualification: Because SalesView works within your existing CRM to bring all of this synthesized information right to you, it improves both the quality and speed of lead qualification.
- Account planning: SalesView finds and alerts you on key events which inform your sales strategies. While conventional tools produce many irrelevant results and miss too many critical events, SalesView spots the best opportunities and supplies just the intelligence you need to act on opportunities immediately
- Data accuracy: The recently announced platform called ‘Smart CloudTM’ allows for validated content by cross-checking information across data sources, identifying likely matches, reconciling any conflicting data points, and then generating a single, composite Smart RecordTM. This delivers the most complete and accurate profile possible, which is increasingly important because of the proliferation of data sources which often results in conflicting or incorrect data across different vendors
- CRM adoption: SalesView helps drive CRM adoption by delivering sales intelligence where the sales reps need it most, directly within their CRM. SalesView turns your CRM into a one-stop-shop for all prospecting and selling activities, making CRM an actual productivity tool for the rep, rather than just a reporting tool for managers.
All in all, the Web is becoming an increasingly valuable - but also time-consuming - place to gather what you need for sales success. From subscription-based, structured databases (e.g. Reuters) to freely available, unstructured social media (e.g. Twitter), SalesView does all of the aggregation and analysis for you.
SalesView wins our vote for a smart selling tool. Arm your Reps with SalesView and let them focus on what they do best – selling!
Creating such smarter tools for selling is a tough challenge. Even if brilliantly designed, such tools must be used and used often to have any hope of having an impact. This requires broad user adoption from a profession that’s notoriously disinclined to widely use any tools.
In this century there have been few tools that the sales profession has widely embraced as productivity improving - the telephone, and the automobile, and email are rare examples. The common bond that drove wide user adoption - these tools got sales people to their next sales conversations faster and, in doing so, made them more productive.
To achieve mass adoption, smarter tools must also get sales people to their next sales conversations faster. They, like phones and automobiles, must be simple to use, and not dangerous (so long as you’re not talking or driving while impaired). They must also be so obviously helpful in improving sales productivity that they’re used every day without any pressure for tool adoption from the boss.
There’s an emerging new paradigm of smarter tools for selling that addresses these needs. This new type of tools is like a Read on
E-book by renowned Sales Expert Jill Konrath,
“Leveraging Triggering Events”
“Financial Justification in a Snap” Podcast
By Kendra Lee of the KLA Group
Negotiation Skills Article by Jeanette Nyden
“Working with Large Companies: 5 Challenges and 5 Solutions”
SalesView keeps tabs on your prospects and customers by continuously monitoring both traditional business data sources (such as Capital IQ, Hoover's, Jigsaw, and Thomson Reuters), as well as emerging social media and the greater Web (blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and over 20,000 online news sites.)
It aggregates all of this information and then surfaces key business events and relationships so you can find, engage, and close new business. And because SalesView works natively in your CRM and within daily email alerts, you never have to go looking for sales intelligence – instead it comes right to you. On your end you have a complete, up-to-date, and validated picture of your lead, prospect, or current customer...and thus the insight to know the best time to reach out and drive sales forward, faster.
You’re faced with an exploding social Web that equates to a wealth of insight into your leads and prospects.
SalesView, an intelligence application from InsideView, serves this very need – leveraging the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies to increase sales productivity and velocity (a movement known as 'Sales 2.0'.)
Get 3 free gifts from 3 top Sales Experts when you
>>
>>
>>
Join Now!
