In today’s highly competitive economy, sales and marketing departments really have to stand out amongst the crowd. The messaging has to be personalized and clearly state what you have to offer that can save them time and money.

One of the worst approaches in sales and marketing today is the “data dump”  of product features. Understanding the customer is vital in today’s society. What challenges are they facing? Are they focused on specific initiatives? Knowing the answer to these questions allows messaging to be tailored and specific to your prospect and will help grab their attention.

The best way to truly understand what is going on within the company is by research and understanding your prospect’s business drivers. As defined by BusinessDictionary.com, business drivers are, “People, knowledge, and conditions (such as market forces) that initiate and support activities for which the business was designed.” Understanding the people within a company, their knowledge and the conditions of their current business strategy will help sales and marketing reps get compelling messaging across the right people.

Our analysts have created a section in our Fortune 1000 CRUSH Reports called Technology Business Drivers. These initiatives, problems or challenges are pulled from earnings calls, annual reports, executive presentations and interviews. They are based on corporate strategies, business initiatives and projects directly tied to IT architectures, IT budgets, executive management changes and new investments in enterprise technology.

Our customers use this section as sales leads, so they can align their business solution to the relevant business problems, opportunities and initatives. This kind of customized approach to business needs is the key to gaining trust and outselling your competitors.

Here’s a sample list of the type of fortune 1000 business drivers that we include in the CRUSH Reports:

• Strategic initiatives
• Expiring contracts
• Restructuring initiatives
• Acquisition integration
• Technology investments
• Data center changes
• Corporate collaboration
• Cost saving initiatives
• Customer service initiatives

Click here to find out more about Technology Business Drivers. Or go to our eStore and download sample CRUSH Reports and see the Technology Business Drivers section.

Trish Ellis
Marketing Manager
SalesQuest
Trisha.ellis @ salesquest dot com

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Cloud computing is not just a buzzword but is changing the IT service model for many companies. It is freeing up the needs of the IT department managing the in-house data access and storage requirements.

There are a lot of estimates out there about the growth of cloud computing. IDC estimates growing to $56 billion by 2014 while Gartner estimates $150B by 2013. Although the numbers are quite different, the message is the same, cloud computing will be continuing to grow exponentially.

Kraft Foods, for example, is looking to move their company to cloud computing. “Cloud services is another way to expand what your company does, who you collaborate with, and stop limiting your company with physical and technical boundaries.” Mark Dajani, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Kraft Foods stated.

As IT departments continue to move their data management to the cloud, now is the time to be targeting companies providing them with your cloud computing solutions. There are additional opportunities for companies selling into IT. With cloud computing, businesses get their software and data delivered to them over the Internet. It’s saving on hardware and labor costs not having to maintain their own servers. This allows IT departments to focus not only their time, but their budgets on other functionalities. Over the next few years, I see the opportunities to sell into IT on the rise.

Our Technology Business Drivers document contains industry sales intelligence and technology sales leads in the Fortune 1000 and Global 500. For more information about CRUSH Reports and how you can gain access to Technology Business Drivers, visit www.SalesQuest.com/services.

Trisha Ellis
SalesQuest
Email: trisha.ellis @ SalesQuest dot com
978.749.9999 ext. 105

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

With increasing gas prices, not only are consumers concerned about improving their fuel efficiency, it is top of mind for companies as well. Although it may require an initial investment, in the long run, it can pay off.

UPS is a prime example. They announced in July of 2010 that they were increasing their current automotive goal to improve their miles per gallon from 10% to 20% between the years of 2000 and 2020. They have invested over $25 million in its alternative fuel fleet and are continuing to improve it.

Recently, UPS purchased another 130 hybrid-electric delivery trucks to be used this year, in 2011. This is adding to their alternative-fuel fleet of 1,949. Technically, it’s only a small percentage of their 100,000 vehicle fleet but UPS estimates these gas saving vehicles will improve fuel economy by 35 percent, saving 66,085 gallons of fuel and 671 metric tons of CO2 annually.

“Our automotive efficiencies over the last decade show a genuine commitment to conserving fuel and decreasing the emissions associated with the packages we deliver,” said Bob Stoffel, UPS Senior Vice President and the executive responsible for UPS’s sustainability program. “This new goal for the next decade is an important milestone in UPS’s continuing dedication to finding and using new technology and processes that help us meet our customers’ needs in a sustainable way.” Stoffel has retired from UPS as of January 1^st, 2011, with no replacement announced as of yet.

UPS has used innovative technologies to assist in achieving these goals. They have improved vehicle technology, vehicle maintenance procedures, fuel conservation efforts, sophisticated routing technology, operational initiatives and simple things like minimizing idling. Although decreased fuel consumption is a positive result, it’s also about having low emission vehicles to help protect the environment. If your technology product can help UPS to become more green and help them reach their “going green” goals, now would be a great time to reach out to them.

In our current economy, with gas prices on the rise, more and more companies are moving toward green initiatives not only to help save dollars, but also to stay current with the alternative fuel market.

For more sales strategies for UPS, check out the sample UPS CRUSH Report. Also, our Technology Business Drivers document contains industry sales intelligence and technology sales leads in the Fortune 1000 and Global 500. Feel free to download additional sample CRUSH Reports on Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and Starbucks, please visit: http://www.salesquest.com/demo/

Ryan Murray
SalesQuest
Email: Ryan @ SalesQuest dot com
978.749.9999 ext. 102

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Extractable, modifiable, clean, accurate, comprehensive: in an age of customization and automated analysis in mass quantities, these are qualities that we demand of the data we input so that the output is reliable and useful. Whether you’re running through lists of corporate contacts to add to a database for marketing programs or using metrics on consumer buying data to analyze buying trends to optimize your supply chain, we depend on data for so many different aspects of business.

As technology becomes more sophisticated, businesspeople are demanding speed and ease in their data gathering endeavors in order to save as much (precious) time as possible. In marketing and sales especially, there is strength in numbers; blasting a campaign to 80,000 contacts that may not be good prospects is faster and cheaper than handpicking singular people to spend your precious time calling to pitch your product. Dun & Bradstreet understands it’s customers’ need for fast and accurate data; they know that if they can’t provide a platform that is easy to use in order to extract their “commercial data,” which also needs to be kept clean and updated, they will lose market share.

The company expects to spend approximately $110 million to $130 million over the next two years to strengthen its leading position in commercial data and to improve its current technology platform. According to D&B president and CEO, Sara Mathew, “We will create a new data supply chain leveraging outside vendors who have state of the art technology.” The company has migrated its data management responsibilities to Acxiom, who will provide data center operations, technology help desk, and network management functions, which were formerly managed by CSC.

Acxiom was chosen to focus on increasing speed, data processing capacity and matching capabilities. D&B is investing huge amounts of money to provide customers with a seamless integration of higher quality, real time data through a range of “new age” work flows including mobile solutions, social networks, and text alerts. According to CEO Sara Mathew, “Our current infrastructure can be improved. It has impeded our ability to meet emerging customer needs at a time when customers are demanding an increased space of innovation to cope with the softer economy.”

Dun & Bradstreet is clearly tuned into the most recent changes in marketing and technology, and more importantly, how these things affect their customers’ business endeavors. They realize that they must invest in their platform, or their accurate and comprehensive data will be rendered useless. In this economy, people are choosing the easiest and quickest solutions in order to save money, and D&B knows that spending a little extra to optimize their user interface will more than make up for itself with customer renewals and new business.

- Carolyn Sebasky
carolyn . sebasky@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 107

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

With tech spending finally on the rise again, business needs that may have been pushed aside due to cost cutting initiatives are finally starting to be addressed again. This, of course, means that companies, especially large enterprises and the Fortune 1000, will be investing in solutions that may not be crucial for the day-to-day functioning of the business, but that may increase profitability or ease a (less crucial) business pain.

Wholesale retailer BJ’s has formulated an entire technology revamp project that they call IT Roadmap, which is expected to cost them $20-30 million per year until 2013. The project is meant to pull the company out of the economic depression by capitalizing on opportunities for improvement and updates in their systems and processes, especially ones that may have fallen by the wayside over the last few years. These improvements include their sales reporting, financial and membership systems.

As the economy stabilizes, the BJ’s knows it needs to capitalize on their customers’ imminent increase in spending by catering to them in the most efficient way possible. BJ’s plans to complete their HR system upgrade, pilot new store registers and launch a new e-commerce website in 2010. BJ’s expects these investments will cost approximately $68 million.

As part of the their focus on customer data, BJ’s is taking a close look at product and data management and will also be pursuing a master data management (MDM) initiative. They are looking to link customer “membership” data to their product data so that any patterns or inconsistencies can be analyzed (through an ERP system) and then use this information to optimize their supply chain, product offerings, and e-commerce/point-of-sale systems according to what their customers’ behaviors are.

There are two separate components to the initiative, according former CIO John Polizzi: a business and a tactical project. “We chose the membership and product data management system as the first two areas where we are going to look to externalize our master data from any application. Then, as we choose an ERP system, that will be the data source that feeds the ERP data.” BJ’s is currently in the process of selecting an ERP system, which is to be planned for implementation by 2012.

Clearly, BJ’s and other retailers are finally ready to spend again. They realize that in order to stay competitive, they must spend now. If your organization is already established in the retail vertical, now is the time to refocus your efforts on finding the business needs within these accounts and then aligning you product to become the solution. If you are looking to expand your target industries, retail is a ripe opportunity as consumers are beginning to spend again and retailers, more than ever, need to cater to their customers’ needs.

For more current technology initiatives and free technology sales leads in the Fortune 1000 and Global 500, check out our Technology Business Drivers document.

- Carolyn Sebasky
carolyn . sebasky@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 107

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.