Sales Intelligence: Best-in-Class Strategies Adopted by Salesforce Data.com Customers
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1 Sales Intelligence: Best-in-Class Strategies Adopted by Salesforce Data.com While every sales leader may fantasize about the rewards and benefits of seeing every member of their team meet or beat quota, the reality of business-to-business (B2B) sales management is that only some percentage of reps will perform as A players. The secret of success in running a holistically high-performing sales team lies in understanding how to move as many individuals up the alphabetical food chain as possible, creating the maximum number of opportunities for individuals to hit their number and for the overall team to perform so strongly that it is enabled to provide ongoing resources for the B and even C members to improve their contribution. This Research Brief focuses on one of these key resources Sales Intelligence and how both Best-in-Class organizations and Salesforce Data.com users most effectively leverage customer data and sales operations best practices to maximize the performance of their teams. August 2013 Research Brief Aberdeen s Research Briefs provide a detailed exploration of key findings from a primary research study, including key performance indicators, Best-in- Class insight, and vendor insight. Sales Intelligence: The Context of the Research Current Aberdeen research being conducted for the pending study on Eliminating the Noise: Best Practices for the Five W s of Sales Intelligence has thus far yielded 206 completed end-user surveys, including 49 organizations indicating that salesforce.com with their Data.com solution is their primary provider of prospect and customer information. Figure 1: Salesforce Data.com Out-Perform Other Firms Percentage of Attainment 80% 70% 40% Salesforce Data.com customers All Others 75% 72% 68% 61% 53% 47% 39% 30% Customer retention rate Team attainment of quota Sales forecast accuracy Reps achieving quota This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group. Aberdeen Group's methodologies provide for objective fact-based research and represent the best analysis available at the time of publication. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group, Inc. and may not be reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent by Aberdeen Group, Inc.
2 Page 2 Early indications regarding the overall sales effectiveness of these users, compared to that of all other organizations, points to a significant number of performance deltas that are summarized in Figure 1. With 28% more sales reps achieving their annual quota ( vs. 39%), the ambitions of sales leaders described above are ostensibly much more attainable if they use Data.com solutions, not to mention the value of increased customer loyalty and sales forecast accuracy. Now, let s take a detailed look at how these over-achievers create this business value. What Do We Want From Sales Intelligence? Aberdeen research is always conducted from the same starting point: what do the line-of-business practitioners, in this case the executives who run sales organizations and their operational support team, want to accomplish by implementing some sort of change? In the context of the current Sales Intelligence research, we see in Figure 2 that the leading goal among survey respondents is clearly focused on the top of the traditional sales funnel: we need more leads, and better ones, so that our team members can spend their time selling, rather than looking for data. Figure 2: Business Goals around Sales Intelligence Time is the Most Precious Commodity The Sales Intelligence Best-in- Class In June and July 2013, Aberdeen surveyed 206 end-user sales organizations to understand their sales effectiveness best practices. The performance metrics used to define the Best-in-Class (top 20%), Industry Average (middle ) and Laggard (bottom 30%) among these sales teams are: 85% customer retention rate, vs. 70% among Industry Average and 30% for Laggard firms 10.7% average year-over-year increase in overall team attainment of sales quota, vs. a 0.5% decrease for the Industry Average and a 12.4% decline among Laggard respondents Percentage of respondents 75% 45% 30% 15% 0% 61% Improve lead quality/quantity, to maximize selling time 36% Improve reps knowledge of territory/industry/ accounts, for more educated, consultative conversations All companies 27% Identify high-value prospects through trigger events 16% 16% Track prospect engagement Automate the flow of externally sourced intelligence that is relevant to Sales 9.3% average year-over-year increase in average deal size or contract value, vs. a 0.2% decrease for the Industry Average and a 5.9% decline among Laggard respondents 7.9% average year-over-year increase in the percentage of sales reps achieving quota, vs. 2.2% and 13.5% declines for Industry Average and Laggard respondents, respectively, of (increase in) the cycle time among Laggard respondents This dominant desire is complemented by additional, highly-mentioned goals (respondents were asked to select their top two) that speak even more clearly to the value of providing front-line sellers with better ammunition to support them in the field: resources that help reps present themselves as consultative, solutionselling advocates who don t just peddle products, but understand and can converse about the business environment and challenges faced by their prospects and customers. This is all about serving our B2B accounts as trusted advisors, rather than as commission-hungry salespeople; given the vast resources available to today s buyers they can easily learn about our products and pricing without us it is crucial to add human value to sales conversations, and the best way to maximize a seller s ability to close a deal is to follow the advice of Louis Pasteur:
3 Page 3 Chance favors the prepared mind. Additionally, 49% of survey respondents follow through on the third most popular business goal in Figure 1, by formally deploying trigger alerts for their sales team members, leveraging the incredible resources of user-generated content and social media to help create real-time sales opportunity management advantages; it is hard to argue with the value of a rapid response culture in a sales or customer service environment. Interestingly, Data.com customers report a 31% higher rate (64%) of trigger notification usage than the average of all companies, illustrating the first of many connections we will see between the adoption of specific sales effectiveness best practices and superior business results. Learning from the Best-in-Class As a complementary set of data points to the above illustration of key sales management goals, it is also worth noting that the two most commonly cited business pressures (see Aberdeen s PACE methodology, sidebar) among all survey respondents are: inability to identify the most likely buyers of our product or service and insufficient knowledge of the business needs of our prospective buyers, with 48% and 46% respective response rates. The promise of welldeployed sales intelligence solutions to ease these pressures provides an appropriate segue to exploring how the Best-in-Class performers (sidebar, page 2), within the current research, specifically deploy key capabilities and technology enablers that directly yield their superior business results. In Figure 3 these top performers reveal all of the stages, within the traditional customer acquisition and account service lifecycle, in which they deploy externally-provided sales intelligence data in order to support more efficient selling activities. By a significant margin, the three most relevant touch points ratify the above discussion regarding using sales intelligence both to populate the top of the traditional sales funnel, as well as to inform a more consultative and customer-friendly conversations as the buyer-seller relationships move forward. Aberdeen s PACE Methodology Aberdeen applies a methodology to benchmark research that evaluates the business Pressures, Actions, Capabilities, and Enablers (PACE) that indicate corporate behavior in specific business processes: Pressures external forces that impact an organization s market position, competitiveness, or business operations. Actions the strategic approaches that an organization takes in response to industry pressures. Capabilities the business process competencies (process, organization, performance, and knowledge management) required to execute corporate strategy. Enablers the key functionality of technology solutions required to support the organization s enabling business practices. Figure 3: Best Stages in the Customer Lifecycle to Deploy Sales Intelligence 100% 94% Best-in-Class Percentage of respondents 85% 70% 55% 40% 74% 43% 43% 25% Prospecting / list generation Company / individual research for meeting prep Identifying new opportunities for cross-sell / upsell in existing accounts Staying up-to-date on company or executive changes for account retention purposes Identifying new opportunities with related accounts using company hierarchy data
4 Page 4 Despite all of the current technology-based and social media-oriented tools available to modern sales teams, business developers still need the allimportant "list" who are the people and companies, and what are the basic demographic and firmographic essentials about them, to whom I can sell? This is why the most commonly nominated sales stages in Figure 3 are appropriately reported as crucial watershed moments where sales intelligence solutions are effectively deployed to initiate, prepare, and follow through on the most effective sales and service-oriented customer discussions. Additional validation of this line of thinking can be found in Aberdeen s Yesterday and Today: How Contemporary Sales Intelligence Users Earn Best-in-Class Results (December 2012), which in turn provides insight into how to best leverage the very same technologies and social tools in the interest of creating the best possible list. Indeed, the most commonly indicated types of sales intelligence reported as regularly used by Best-in-Class firms showcase the need to blend traditional and contemporary sources: Sales Intelligence Defined For the purposes of this research, the phrase sales intelligence refers to any information used to educate and enable the sales force and enrich the sales pipeline. This includes news on industry trends, consumer generated / social content, list / database providers, analyst reports, prospecting tools, competitive / market intelligence, and lead augmentation solutions. Targeted company information, such as company details, financial statements, competitor information, corporate hierarchy (81%) Executives / people information, such as individual contact details, job titles, biographies (78%) User-generated content, such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn (56%) Data on competitors products and/or pricing (53%) Amplifying these results are the responses, among all companies, to the question What types of information supplied by external content providers are most valuable to your sales team? Here, much less differentiation among the six most popular responses (all within the 31% 40% answer range, Table 1) tells us that sales intelligence necessarily informs a wide variety of needs for contemporary sellers, and actually does provide far more than just the traditional list. In the case of Data.com users within the current survey results, there are no significant deviations from these priorities, with the exception of a 15% higher premium (39% vs. 34%) placed on basic business card content, indicating a focus on top-of-funnel contact accuracy; these sales teams are encouraged to leverage sister technologies from the same solution provider social media feeds and collaboration, coaching platforms, etc. in order to continue leading other companies in terms of overall sales performance. Table 1: Multiple Data Sources Support Varied Sales Uses Most Valuable Third-Party Sales Intelligence Data Company hierarchy (40%) Customer intelligence (35%) Competitive intelligence (34%) Basic business card information (34%) Basic company information (33%) Segmented contacts (31%)
5 Page 5 Core Competencies Support Aggressive Leveraging of Customer Data Now, let s analyze how Best-in-Class companies set themselves apart from other sales organizations in terms of deploying best practices and technologies around sales intelligence. In Figure 4, we see these top performers more aggressively implementing a series of knowledge management capabilities that all point to the need to optimize the use of the all-important sales platform, the customer relationship management (CRM) instance. Figure 4: Best-in-Class Management of Tribal Knowledge How Valuable is a Sales Rep s Time? Sales reps within Best-in-Class companies spend an average of 20% of their time searching for sales intelligence and therefore not actually selling. Among Industry Average and Laggard firms, however, this number rises to 22% and 27% respectively. Percentage of Respondents 100% 75% 25% 0% 90% 87% 68% Sales-focused, centralized repository of account, contact, sales opportunity data Best-in-Class Industry Average Laggard 62% 54% Ability to integrate third-party content into CRM / SFA 48% 15% 15% Ability to integrate data from CRM, internal knowledge bases, support ticketing, external sources into account management console or dashboard While 82% of all companies predictably support a centralized selling and servicing customer data repository essentially code for CRM the Bestin-Class lead the other performance cohorts, especially Laggards, by a sizable margin. These deltas dramatically increase when we look at the popularity of CRM best practices specific to sales intelligence, for which the majority of Best-in-Class firms, but only 15% of Laggards, do everything they can to support the leading sales effectiveness goal observed in Figure 2 above: maximizing the time that sales reps have to actually sell (sidebar), by automating the flow of relevant prospect, customer, account, business, and market data into the operational sales system of record the CRM. This is a crucial initiative that the strongest sales performers in Aberdeen s research consistently make one of their top action items, as validated in The Path Best Taken: Leveraging CRM in Pursuit of the Elusive Single View of the Customer (September 2012), and validated by the Data.com survey respondents in the current research, who are 28% more likely than All Others ( vs. 39%) to adopt the third knowledge management capability in Figure 4. An additional advantage of reconciling every bit of customer-centric data in a centralized repository within the enterprise is that this single view of the customer benefits other lines of business, in addition to sales leadership, who have a legitimate stake in viewing and perhaps contributing to the customer or account record. Best-in-Class companies lead All Others in terms of extending CRM access to other functional departments who touch
6 Page 6 customers in meaningful ways, and which can certainly benefit from more accurate, up-to-date, and relevant customer data: 78% vs. 62% include marketing; vs. 38% include executive management; and even for the customer service team, which typically deploys its own contact center or help desk platform, 25% vs. 19%. Survey respondents who report Data.com as their primary provider lead non-users, 87% to 80%, in confirming that Sales intelligence is available to other functions within our company, such as marketing, customer service, or operations. When they further leverage mobile-friendly and social media-informed sources and deployments of customer data, these organizations, and the Best-in-Class, make CRM integration of sales intelligence, on behalf of all line-of-business leaders, a clear choice (Figure 5). Figure 5: CRM Integration of Sales Intelligence No-Brainer Percentage of Respondents 40% 30% 45% Best-in-Class 39% CRM integrated with sales intelligence All Others 57% No sales intelligence integrated with CRM Fast Facts: Best-in-Class Additional Performance Results current In addition to the sales-centric performance metrics used to determine Best-in-Class companies for this research data set (page 2), these firms also report average current performance results that are superior to other companies: 76% average current team attainment of annual sales quota, vs. 61% and 49% among Industry Average and Laggard companies 59% average sales forecast accuracy, compared with 53% for Industry Average and only 29% among Laggards 53% of sales reps achieved their individual annual sales quota, vs. 44% among Industry Average and 31% for Laggards These kinds of technology deployments, however, do not happen by themselves. Rather, we explore in Figure 6 a number of crucial process capabilities, which are far more frequently in place among Best-in-Class firms, that enable an effective deployment of CRM, sales intelligence, and all related data management platforms. Top-performing sales organizations are wellversed in the value and practice of: Linking sales intelligence utilization to sales stage advancement. As validated in Better Sales Forecasting Through Process and Technology: No Crystal Ball Required (July 2012), companies with more accurate sales forecasts, and better performance, seek to institutionalize a de-emphasis on sales rep subjectivity when it comes to estimating the likelihood for certain deals to close. One of the more objective methods for sales leaders to truly understand opportunity value is to require an escalating level of sales intelligence use by sales reps seeking permission to advance their deals higher up the percentage-likely-to-close scale. In other words, if the rep has not identified appropriate decision-makers, or gathered enough detail on
7 Page 7 their accounts or markets, they are not permitted to increase the upleveling of revenue expectations. Figure 6: Process Capabilities Ensure More Value from Technology Percentage of Respondents 90% 75% 45% 30% 80% 74% 65% Defined sales milestones include use and analysis of sales intelligence data Best-in-Class Industry Average Laggard 74% Tracking prospect engagement through the customer lifecycle, and unifying customer data. While the CRM is a musthave customer engagement platform, it does not live in a vacuum. Rather, we know from Optimizing the Marketing and Sales Process: How the Best-in-Class Take Faster, Better Action to Convert More Leads (May 2013) that when the marketing automation, CRM, and even the customer service technologies are properly integrated, a more effective understanding of the people, needs, and budget within our accounts becomes clear to all customer-oriented staff and managers. With more accurate account data, these individuals are empowered to make better decisions on behalf of their customers. For this process capability, Data.com customers lead even the Best-in-Class, with a 79% adoption rate, and compare with 66% among companies not using their services. 67% Process for tracking prospect engagement 64% 51% 36% Process for unifying data on customers, through multiple touch points Fast Facts: Best-in-Class Additional Performance Results year-over-year In addition to the sales-centric performance metrics used to determine Best-in-Class companies for this research data set (page 2), these firms also report average year-over-year performance results that are superior to other companies: 11.4% growth in overall company revenue, vs. 2.9% for the Industry Average and a 2.5% decrease among Laggard companies 3.1% improvement in customer retention, contrasted with 0.6% for Industry Average firms and a 4.8% decrease among Laggards Case Study: Everbank Commercial Finance Consider the case of Parsippany, NJ-based Everbank Commercial Finance, Inc., a commercial finance company providing sales-aid financing for manufacturers and resellers in the healthcare, industrial, office products and IT / telecommunications verticals. According to Mike Jones, Chief Originations Officer of the organization s Technology Group, the company emerged from the recent recession with a mandate to grow revenue significantly through his team of 40+ originators, who typically sell leasing services at the rate of over 12,000 deals per year. The problem we faced as we prepared to embark on this major growth initiative, Jones explains, was that after cobbling together our prospecting database for a decade, contributed ad-hoc by hundreds of originator staff, we ended up with thousands of contacts and accounts, with little rhyme or reason around accuracy or relevancy. Jones says that Everbank Commercial Finance s two main problems were a garage full of
8 Page 8 junk enormous volumes of bad data that wasted our time as well as real selling opportunities that were sullied by inaccurate, old and disorganized contact data. Everbank Commercial Finance added an upgraded flow of customer, contact and company intelligence to their team s CRM deployment from the same provider in January Jones acknowledges that adoption was not immediately strong: we had a number of old-school originators who were married to Rolodexes and Excel spreadsheets, but once we included CRM utilization as a formal condition of employment for the role, adoption soared. Today, he explains, EverBank Commercial Finance has a far better understanding of our customer, with higher hit rates and far less bad data that wastes our time. While most of Everbank Commercial Finance s lease originations business is sold to manufacturers and resellers who in turn provide the financing options to their own retail customers, a percentage of their throughput involves direct sales to practitioners. For this niche, Jones says that our improvement has been phenomenally successful: my team members literally click a button in the CRM and get the right contact to call immediately. In terms of return-on-investment, Jones indicates that anecdotal evidence is already quite strong that EverBank Commercial Finance s customer/prospect database is far cleaner, giving his team members more time to prospect and close business. It s so much better having clean, up-to-date information, which in turn makes it more effective to manage our team, close deals and grow our business, he concludes. Conclusion: Confirming the Investment Finally, we all know that you can't manage what you don t measure. Aberdeen s research methodology includes analysis of performance management capabilities, which help enterprises understand how their peers,. Figure 7: Performance Management Capabilities Measure, Manage, Win Percentage of Respondents 75% 45% 30% 15% 0% 72% 47% 20% ROI measurement of sales intelligence investment Best-in-Class Industry Average Laggard 65% 56% 11% Sales staff performance evaluation includes sales intelligence utilization 58% 38% 27% Ability to track impact of thirdparty intelligence sources on sales performance
9 Page 9 contemporaries, and competitors most effectively understand the return on investment for their technology deployments. The data in Figure 7 is striking in terms of how Best-in-Class companies far more aggressively take stock in their sales intelligence spend. Not only do these top performers overwhelmingly support the objective activity of ROI analysis on the overall initiative; they break it down further into evaluating the effectiveness of data specifically acquired from external third parties. Also, much as we have seen a direct correlation between linking opportunity forecasting with sales intelligence utilization, Best-in-Class firms are nearly sixtimes more likely than Laggards to consider sales intelligence so important that its use is one of the determining factors in evaluating sales rep performance. Hold on a minute isn't sales rep performance simply a function of whether they hit their number? This predictable response to the above assertion is addressed in Motivate, Incent, Compensate, Enable: Sales Performance Management Best Practices (January 2013), which teaches us that while sales performance is certainly more easily measured than many other job roles, the opportunity to turn more reps into A players is strengthened by using the right carrots encouraging the use of sales intelligence through gamification, for example to motivate the most desirable behaviors. Best-in-Class sales organizations understand more clearly how to blend the acquisition of accurate customer data with effective sales coaching and motivation to achieve their superior results defined in this Research Brief. Data.com customers consistently align with these best practices, and yield equally more enviable sales performance numbers than their other counterparts within the survey respondent pool. For more information on this or other research topics, please visit
10 Page 10 Making the Most of Your CRM: How Bestin-Class Sales Teams Maximize Revenue and Customer Experience; June 2013 Optimizing the Marketing and Sales Process: How the Best-in-Class Take Faster, Better Action to Convert More Leads; May 2013 Motivate, Incent, Compensate, Enable: Sales Performance Management Best Practices; January 2013 CRM 2013: Manufacturing Success through Mobilized, Integrated, and Flexible Deployments; January 2013 Collaborate, Listen, Contribute: How Bestin-Class Sales Teams Leverage Social Selling; November 2012 Related Research Breaking the Laws of Physics: Shortening the Last Sales Mile Through Workflow Automation; April, 2013 CRM 2013: Generating Business Value throughout the Enterprise; April 2013 Train, Coach, Reinforce: Best Practices in Maximizing Sales Productivity; October 2012 Better Sales Forecasting Through Process and Technology: No Crystal Ball Required; July 2012 Sales Intelligence: What B2B Sellers Need To Know Before the Call; June 2012 Partner Relationship Management: Channeling Better Sales Results; March 2012 Sales Mobility: How Best-in-Class Remote Sellers Are Replacing See with Do ; March 2012 Author: Peter Ostrow, Vice President and Research Group Director; Customer Management, Sales Effectiveness (peter.ostrow@aberdeen.com) LinkedIn Twitter For more than two decades, Aberdeen's research has been helping corporations worldwide become Best-in-Class. Having benchmarked the performance of more than 644,000 companies, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to provide organizations with the facts that matter the facts that enable companies to get ahead and drive results. That's why our research is relied on by more than 2.5 million readers in over 40 countries, 90% of the Fortune 1,000, and 93% of the Technology 500. As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen s research provides insight and analysis to the Harte-Hanks community of local, regional, national and international marketing executives. Combined, we help our customers leverage the power of insight to deliver innovative multichannel marketing programs that drive business-changing results. For additional information, visit Aberdeen or call (617) , or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) or go to This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group. Aberdeen Group's methodologies provide for objective fact-based research and represent the best analysis available at the time of publication. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group, Inc. and may not be reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent by Aberdeen Group, Inc. (2013a)
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