Last year was a very turbulent year for IT spending. Most companies were trying to reduce their costs and weren’t spending cash on their IT infrastructure until the dust settled from the great recession of 2009.

According to the December 2009 CIO Economic Impact Survey, CIO budgets and capital spending are both increasing from the previous years levels. When asked the same question in May 2009 only 14% of respondents said their budgets would be increasing compared to 40% in December 2009.

One of the most important sales enablement tools is sales intelligence; you must have accurate and up-to-date sales intelligence on your prospects. Sales intelligence tools will help you answer the who, what, where, why, and when questions in your planning process. If you have that information at your disposal, all you need to do is figure out the “how.” The “how” should be focused on relationship building. Using your sales enablement and sales intelligence tools you can start developing relationships with the key stake holders and decision-makers at the accounts you’re going after.

While it may be obvious, reps that are pressed for time and don’t have easy access to the information often overlook this step. Online sales intelligence resources such as Hoovers allow for CRM integration so that relevant company information like annual revenues can be imported and attached to an account with the click of a button. This additional information can be ignored in the lead qualification process if the access to it is not quick and easy.