Solving the Data Dilemma for Sales and Marketing. Selling Power Editors

Transcription

1 Solving the Data Dilemma for Sales and Marketing Selling Power Editors

2 DATA DEFINITIONS Firmographics: detailed company information This includes such facts as company size, number of employees, SIC code, headquarters address, or annual revenue. Contacts: phone & for decision makers Specifically, sales teams are seeking job titles that indicate decision-making power. A regional vice president is an attractive lead; an account executive isn t as promising. Obviously, sales teams also need accurate contact information for leads. Insights: financial data, business events or social info Salespeople are always on the lookout for notifications about changes, news, or events that could indicate a good opportunity to have a conversation with a lead or prospect. This could include company mergers or an executive s move from one company to another. Selling in the Age of Information A salesperson s basic mission is to prospect and close deals. To do that job well, two of the most important things salespeople need are information and data. It used to be that the most useful kinds of information (contact information for decision makers, for example, or news about executive job changes) were in short supply. Today, however, a shortage of information is no longer a problem for sellers and marketers. In fact, they face the opposite problem. There s a stat from IBM that 90 percent of the world s data has been created in the last two years, says, Vice President of Content at InsideView. There is an enormous and inexorably growing amount of information about everything and anything you could possibly want to know, and then some. There is an enormous and inexorably growing amount of information about everything and anything you could possibly want to know, and then some. Relevant Data for Sales & Marketing Pros The challenge for sellers today is to find in this sea of data only what they need and quickly, before it becomes obsolete and useless. Many companies currently maintain the same databases they ve had for years. According to Brian Kelly, Chief Marketing Officer at InsideView, many of these databases house information that s inaccurate. Data deteriorates constantly, says Kelly. The more time goes by, the less accurate it is. Data deteriorates constantly, some estimate that, left untouched, the average database degrades at 25%-35% per year. The more time goes by, the less accurate it is. Brian Kelly Chief Marketing Officer at InsideView Say a company has taken five years to build a database of 20 million contacts. At the end of five years, much of that information about companies and individuals is outdated. The lack of clean data is a major pain point for sales organizations, Kelly says (see sidebar, The InsideView Approach: Clean, Enrich, Target ). Both Anderson and Kelly say that InsideView was founded to find solutions for data-related challenges faced by sales and marketing teams. It s inevitable that the volume of information will continue to grow, says Anderson. To make use of that information, you absolutely have to have a technology-based, scalable approach to data.

3 Today, a technologically forward approach allows sales and marketing teams to reap larger benefits from their data. InsideView, for example, has built a system that pulls in firmographic information, contact data, social insights and news from 30,000 sources. These include the following: Traditional vendors (e.g., Equifax) Regulatory filings National news sources Local or regional news sources Trade publications Company Websites Newswire sources and then sends triggers to alert reps to company changes, including acquisitions, lawsuits, new office openings, executive job changes, and more. All of this data is available within leading CRM systems. Data is the engine of successful sales and marketing teams, says Kelly. For example, Microsoft has hundreds of subsidiaries and business units. Each of those has an address, phone number, other accounts associated with the subsidiary, news associated with that subsidiary, blogs, tweets, and information from corporate Websites and social sites. Each of those discrete pieces of information represents a distinct data event. With InsideView, data sets are updated continually and, where applicable, in real time. The traditional model of creating and maintaining data sets relied on manual effort. Companies like Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) hired writers Intelligent Marketing The InsideView for Marketing suite leverages InsideView s CRM Intelligence Platform to enable marketers to run more effective campaigns with relevant and accurate data. DIAGNOSE AND CLEAN YOUR DATABASE Dirty data compromises even the best marketing programs, yet the average marketing database is at least 20% inaccurate. InsideView Data Diagnostic is a great tool that lets you analyze the health of your database and quickly understand what percentage of your records are inaccurate, incomplete, or duplicate entries. Data Diagnostic also helps you better understand your database by analyzing all records and providing a report with firmographic, industry, and geographic segmentation. Once you understand where the problems are, InsideView Clean can help you get things back on track. Clean gets your house in order, says Brian Kelly, Chief Marketing Officer at InsideView. We take your data, and update anything that s inaccurate. Then we ll also append the records with any new fields if they need them. InsideView uses a variety of sources to keep data clean. Since all data is live and maintained in the cloud, data is updated and validated as new, fresh information is available. Validation happens technologically and editorially within the InsideView platform. KEEP IT CLEAN As new data enters the database through lead generation, Web forms, purchased lists, etc., it is critical that each record be complete with a standard set of fields and each field is populated with complete, accurate data. InsideView ensures that every record that enters the database is accurate and complete, automatically. The InsideView CRM Intelligence Platform is designed to deliver only the information that sellers and marketers need most. For example, InsideView s software is used to find accurate company and contact records for millions of companies. It also monitors company news and business events A human editorial force cannot credibly cover millions of companies. The amount of work they created in a month is done in an hour by InsideView software. and editors who collected, organized, and updated data about companies around the world. They manually monitored press releases and newswires to gather relevant information and update their records. A human editorial force cannot credibly cover millions of companies, says Anderson. The amount of work they created in a month is done in an hour by InsideView software. InsideView software also sidesteps the drawbacks of user-generated databases, such as Data.com. This model quickly builds a large database composed of contributions by individual users; the downside is that there is not necessarily any incentive for users to create accurate records. When Data.com first came out as Jigsaw, it got built up really fast, but much of the contributed information ended up not being so useful, says Kelly. So if you re working in Salesforce and you type in a lead, we populate all other records with that information, says Kelly. Or if you have a lead come in because that person downloaded a white paper from your website, InsideView populates that lead with firmographic and contact information immediately. The benefit is that you don t have to do it manually. You can simply route the lead and score it and be confident that it s accurate and complete. PRECISION TARGETING This is a list-building product that offers more granularity and relevance than traditional services. Not only can you use it to segment based on standard information, like healthcare companies with revenue of 150 million or greater, says Kelly, but you can also filter a segment based on news, events, and any social information. In that case, you might want to search for healthcare companies with revenue of 150 million or greater that have just opened new offices. That helps you reach out in a timely and more informed way.

4 UNDERSTANDING THE THREE STANDARD APPROACHES TO DATA Just a decade or two ago, salespeople looking for information about prospects and customers had relatively few places to start. Newspapers were a good source of daily information, but they mostly reported on the Fortune 500. To round out their knowledge, salespeople had to look to industry journals, trade magazines, newsletters, and publicly available reports, such as regulatory filings. Often, information about small or medium-size businesses or private companies was simply unavailable to anyone without insider connections. As a result, successful salespeople took years to amass personal lists of contacts within their industry. The bigger your personal address book, the bigger your competitive advantage. TYPE 1: Information-services providers EXAMPLES: Hoover s HOW THEY WORK: Information-services providers employ editors to cull, organize, and update data manually no (or very little) software or automation allowed. Pros? The information is usually well researched and reliable. Cons? The editorial-services approach is nearly impossible to scale, especially with the ubiquity of the Internet, which is teeming with data and real-time information. Says Brian Kelly, Chief Marketing Officer at InsideView, Dun & Bradstreet has reports on two million companies, but many, many of those reports are devoid of useful content. What they have is a thumbnail sketch of a company, which is perfect for their core audience of credit managers, but it s not useful for someone who wants to analyze a company from a sales or marketing perspective. TYPE 2: User-contributed databases EXAMPLES: Data.com (formerly Jigsaw) HOW THEY WORK: Individual users sign up for the service and contribute information to the database. The community is self-governed, and information entered by users is not validated by any third party. Accordingly, the database can easily become unwieldy, inaccurate, and populated by low-quality information. TYPE 3: Vendor-supplied aggregation EXAMPLES: InsideView, ZoomInfo HOW THEY WORK: These vendors rely on software and automated services (including Web scraping) to gather, parse, and deliver data from the Internet. Today, the landscape looks much different. Here are the three basic types of data services that evolved and still exist today. Our approach at InsideView is unique in that we incorporate the pros of each type of data-service provider model, says, Vice President of Content at InsideView. If you open a record of any company in InsideView, some of the content will come from Reuters or the FCC, some of it will come from social data, and some will come from user contributions, which we then validate at the back end. VENDOR SUPPLIED AGGREGATION The InsideView CRM Intelligence Platform provides the data, insights and connections that are the foundation of all InsideView applications. Accurate data is the core of the platform. InsideView s unique approach to delivering accurate company and contact data is called MTV Multi-sourced, Triangulated, Validated.

5 InsideView SmartData is an important advancement in data science, and is redefining B2B data accuracy standards. Quarterly benchmarks show that InsideView is consistently more accurate than other data providers due to our MTV methodology. Learn more at CRM Intelligence is Here Relevant, Accurate, Complete Data Although the database was intended to be a place where salespeople can find decision makers to whom they can sell, around three quarters of traditional marketing and sales databases contain low-level job titles. The reason for that is simply that more low-level job titles exist than decisionmaker titles, Kelly says, and if you incentivize contributors to input any name at any level, you have a database of product managers and account executives but not decision makers. An added challenge was data run amok; with no editors to evaluate user-submitted information, data simply piled up. First generation contact From the start, we ve taken the stance that there are many roads to enlightenment when it comes to a data-creation model. database systems lack organization and accuracy and suffer some major holes. The data is lumpy because there s no one making distinctions or filling gaps, says Kelly. Rather than be built by a community of users, InsideView grew with the intention of building a comprehensive and streamlined data system that is always evolving and maintains a clean database that is full of complete, current, and accurate data. From the start, we ve taken the stance that there are many roads to enlightenment when it comes to a data-creation model, Anderson says. To succeed with today s customers, sales and marketing teams require accurate and useful data. Without a service such as InsideView, many salespeople waste tremendous amounts of time hunting online for information about prospects and target companies. Prospects are very educated and expect to hear helpful insight from salespeople who know them and their business. Our mission and goal as a company is that we don t want you to think about the data, says Kelly. We want you to assume that you will be armed with everything you need and that it will be current and accurate. WHO CARES ABOUT DATA? Sellers and marketers should care about big data. Why? First, the statistics: According to IBM, 90 percent of the data around today (2.5 quintillion bytes) was created in the last two years alone. How is that possible? The more devices and technology we use, the bigger our data footprint becomes. Anything from browsing the Web, to using GPS on your mobile device, to satellite imagery, to posts on social networks generates data. When it comes to generating leads, prospecting, and closing deals, certain data is invaluable. In particular, contextual information about prospects (either individuals or companies) can tee up relevant information that could lead to an engaging conversation. A salesperson s script before InsideView: Hi, I m wondering if I can take a few moments of your time to introduce myself and tell you about how our services might help you. A salesperson s script after InsideView: Hi, I see you just opened a new headquarters in Des Moines. Congratulations! Our customers save an average of 12 percent on our custom moving and shipping services, and our service hub is in Des Moines. Can we schedule a time to talk about how we can help you?

6 ABOUT SELLING POWER In addition to Selling Power magazine, the leading periodical for sales managers and sales VPs since 1981, Selling Power Inc. produces the Sales Management Digest and Daily Boost of Positivity online newsletters, as well as a fiveminute-video series featuring interviews with top executives. Selling Power is a regular media sponsor of the Sales 2.0 Conference. FOR MORE INFORMATION: visit About the Experts Brian Kelly has been Vice President of Content at InsideView since the inception of the company in Before joining InsideView, he was a Senior Producer at CNN/Money, Time Warner s flagship business-news service. His long career in media and technology includes cofounding five companies, including Individual Investor magazine, Myway.com, and a European investment vehicle, CIR Ventures, based in Milan. Anderson also served as Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Hoover s, the pioneering business information provider, during the company s most rapid growth period before and after its IPO. Though an East Coaster by birth and inclination, Anderson enjoys life in San Francisco, where the wine and beer are both much better. Anderson graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania. Brian Kelly is responsible for the company s overall marketing strategy, product marketing and management, and marketing communications. He brings an extensive career in enterprisesoftware marketing for both CRM and big-data analytic solutions. Prior to joining InsideView, Kelly cofounded and was the CEO of Stampt, developer of an innovative, mobile, customer loyalty application. Prior to that, Kelly was CEO of Quantivo Corporation, a successful provider of cloud-based big data analytics. Additionally, he has served as Executive Vice President of Products at Kana and Executive Vice President of Products at Broadbase. Chief Marketing Officer at InsideView WORKS CITED