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.

Does the solution fit their business need? If it doesn’t, you should probably go sell somewhere else. A company’s need for something is one of their most powerful buying motivators.

From the buyer’s perspective, need is the reason they have to buy something and must find an answer to solve their need. From the seller’s perceptive, need can take a very long time to research and identify. It requires asking a lot of questions, listening and interpreting supporting information and what the buyer is saying. Sellers should thoroughly research and understand the buyer before starting the relationship building process.

Using sales intelligence tools can paint a picture of what’s driving the company. They can identify current business needs and help craft what sales messages should be communicated with the buyer. Developing a sales positioning statement will help put all the pieces of information together to form a logical statement on why they should buy from you.

For example, Boeing has been working to consolidate their data centers. They began the project with about 60 data centers and are down to six as of December 2009. Their final goal is to have three, which will create significant cost reductions with their power drain.

There are many different solutions that could fit this need: consolidate hardware into core locations, outsource the data center administration, utilize the cloud, virtualization, etc.? If you can determine the business need, you can use it the tool to ask intelligence, qualifying questions. Collecting the right information is a critical part of understanding the core aspects of their need and what direction they want or think they should take.

By doing your homework on the company and understanding their business need, more people will listen and answer your questions, especially the decision maker. It will help develop the roadmap for the account and identify the other three BANT criteria: time frame, budgets and decision markers.  If your solution fits their needs, the buyer will find the money.

Fortune 1000 Company Business Drivers

Using CRUSH Reports new business driver section, you’ll be able to identify problems, opportunities and initiatives currently happening in Fortune 1000 companies.

Download the Ford CRUSH Report with 2010 Business Drivers

- Mark Kilens
mark.kilens @ salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 118

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Knowing the company’s problems, initiatives and opportunities before starting a conversation with a new prospect is extremely important. Using their latest earnings call transcript, you can determine the company’s business goals for the short-term and the long-term. You must align your solution and value proposition with their business drivers so the decision makers can better understand your solution’s long-term ROI. CSO Insights’ 2009 survey found that sales reps that align their solutions with the company’s business drivers are far more successful. Account planning and forecasting are the two best things you can do before you start the conversation with a prospect. However, they are two of the most difficult things for a sales rep to do. Both must address what is driving their business now and in the future.

Source: http://www.ciber.com/blog/article.cfm?articleid=2010011934601

If you do your homework and determine the business drivers, you’ll start seeing if your solution really fits at the company you’re targeting. The information you find can enable you to ask the right questions at the right time, and to demonstrate that you’re very knowledgeable about the company and aren’t just trying to make a quick sale. You’ll most likely close the deal faster and exceed the client’s expectations. The following are some examples of real business drivers at Fortune 1000 companies that you may be able align an IT solution with:

• Boeing has been working to consolidate their data centers. They began the project with about 60 data centers and are down to six as of December 2009. Their final goal is to have three, which will create significant cost reductions in the power drain.
• Hertz has expanded company-wide efficiency initiatives utilizing the Hertz Improvement Process; their own version of Lean/Six Sigma. They are eliminating wasted time and resources from car and equipment rental operations and administrative functions, and cascading “best practices” throughout their global organization.
• A Morgan Stanley IT project in 2010 is to grow their grid-computing environment, which includes the engines that the firm uses to conduct risk and analytic computations. CIO of Enterprise Infrastructure Dave Reilly said, “We set ourselves a goal of being able to provide 18,000 to 20,000 grid servers at a remote computing site that will dramatically reduce our server cost.”

Business drivers are the groundwork for starting a sale. Once you know what they are, you can determine if you should go after that account or move on to the next one. Don’t try to force your solution upon a company. You probably won’t get the sale. Even worse, if you do close the sale, the solution might not live up to their standards and won’t provide the ROI they were expecting.

The best approach is to ask the right questions so you can better understand your prospect’s business drivers and get a clear picture of what they’re trying to accomplish before wasting any more of their (and YOUR) valuable time.

- Mark Kilens
mark . kilens@salesquest.com
978-749-9999 ext. 118

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The Aberdeen Group’s PACE Model defines the methods of success of Best-in-Class sales teams and outlines their abilities in the “C” section, titled Capabilities. This list is what sets successful sales forces apart from just average or failing ones and defines their best sales strategies. It consists mostly of processes that exist within the sales department that make a rep’s job easier while also saving time, as well as making the sales process more organized.

Structure and continuity are extremely important in keeping a sales team functional and the sales process successful. Aberdeen’s defined “Best-in-Class” companies have a “formal and documented sales process” in place.  Keeping things organized and requiring a specific progression of steps in the sales cycle ensures that corners are not cut, the prospect is well-qualified and well-nurtured, as well as making sure that no information is lost. The Commence CRM Blog does a great job of defining the reasons that standardization is crucial to a successful sales department. The steps of the process must be clearly defined and simple to follow; the more you can avoid confusion and make this process visible, the more it will actually be followed.

In conjunction with a documented process, Best-in-Class companies have a process for tracking prospect engagement, from e-mail to website visits. CRM systems are a perfect example of a repository for all of this information; phone calls and other correspondences can be tracked, saved, and viewed here, and the progress from lead to customer can be clearly seen. Also, when something goes awry in the sale and it becomes a loss, this data can be analyzed to help determine why the sale was not successful and thus avoid the problem with future opportunities.

Another capability of Best-in-Class companies, not surprisingly, is also a part of most CRM systems: “a centralized repository of account, contact, and opportunity information.” Keeping track of all activity within an account is essential in avoiding making mistakes like repeated calls to the same VP, or e-mail blasting an opt-out. It is also extremely informative to be able to see an account’s history if you are looking to for win backs with a former client so you can approach it with more sensitivity than a new account. Aberdeen also cites that having a “process for unifying customer information gathered through multiple disparate ‘customer touch points’” as a quality of Best-in-Class companies, and clearly, this is a function of a CRM system.

Another less obvious, but easy step to take in order to be more successful, is to encourage communication between reps. A central system like a CRM or even a live messaging functionality on the company intranet can provide an outlet for reps to talk to each other. The ability to share tips and strategies that have helped them close deals, as well as share common gripes and then collaborate to find a solution is invaluable; a two-man effort is always better than one.

In short, there are more than a few defined capabilities (mostly provided by software or SaaS) that can help your sales force hit their quota. By nature, people are lazy; just by implementing very clear and easy-to-follow strategic processes and centralized the information and resources, you will see results.

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

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Being prepared for a sales opportunity is a critical component of being a successful sales rep. Now, more than ever, being educated on your target account in preparation for an important meeting, presentation or call can be the deciding factor in whether or not the sale moves forward and the prospect becomes a customer. Account planning helps you to effectively prepare and stay focused on the prospect’s business objectives and goals to ensure that you achieve your planned results, create a consistent experience for the prospect, and ultimately identify how your product or service can make a positive impact on their business.

Strategic Account Planning

This need for preparation and planning is especially important when selling enterprise technology solutions. You need to know the account inside and out, what technology is currently installed, if your competitors in the account, who the decision makers and influencers are, what their business drivers are, and what their budget is. All of these components can be determined through the research required to create a strategic account plan that will guide you through the sales process.

An account plan should be your blueprint to guide you through the account. It should answer the 5 W’s: who, what, where, when and why, and it should assist you throughout the course of the sales cycle. The account plan should be continuously updated with information you uncover throughout the sales cycle and help you connect the dots to win the sale.

Account planning takes a lot of time and research. The first thing you need is a well-designed account plan template, as the template is your roadmap for the sale. Once you have a template, you then need to fill in your roadmap with different routes and eventually connect the routes to your final destination: closing the sale.

The most difficult part of account planning is performing the research to start mapping your route. Sales intelligence tools can help you answer the 5 W’s and create a logical roadmap for your sales process. As discussed previously in this blog, sales intelligence is critical to achieving best-in-class sales results. Companies using sales intelligence have shorter sales cycles and have more sales reps hitting their quota. Using sales intelligence research in conjunction with account planning gives you the map and the routes for the sale. After that, it is up to you to execute the plan and follow you guide.

Unfortunately, like using a GPS to find your way, in selling there is no one telling you where to turn or when you have reached your destination. But, there are great sales intelligence resources out there for you to take advantage of, and coupled with account planning, you can outrun your competitors.

-Mark Kilens
mkilens @ salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 118

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.