FIVE STEPS YOU NEED TO TAKE NOW TO TURN DATA INTO SALES

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2 THESE GAME-CHANGING TIPS CAN SCALE-UP YOUR PROSPECTING AND FILL YOUR PIPELINE WITH HIGHLY RECEPTIVE LEADS No matter how you reach your prospective customers marketing, telemarketing or sales reps, getting to the right people is key for an efficient sales process. So why do so many organizations fail to find the needle in the haystack, or prospects that are truly interested in their product? In sales, every sales call that goes unanswered lowers ROI and represents a lost opportunity. It is an investment of time, effort, resources and in some cases, travel expenses. So why is the process of closing a sale so difficult and requires sifting through so many leads and prospects? Much of it is due to poor segmentation and prospecting. The sales process can be divided into three major parts prospecting, engaging with the prospect and closing. Prospecting is finding the right group of new and relevant customers who may be interested in your product or service. Engaging involves getting in touch with the prospect, and soliciting the business. Closing is when you get the deal signed after the prospect finally said yes. The most critical step in the sales funnel is prospecting getting to the people who are truly likely to convert

3 Prospecting, engaging and closing can also be presented in a funnel. You prospect relevant potential customers, only very few are worth engaging by , phone, networking, or any other way that works for your organization. Only a few of those approached reply and are ready to engage in a more serious conversation; an even smaller portion of those eventually close the sale. The most critical step in the sales funnel is prospecting getting to the people who are truly likely to convert. Great prospecting can improve conversion rate at every stage of the funnel and make life much easier for your sales operations. So why is prospecting so hard? There are two main reasons. First, prospecting is time intensive. It requires ample time to manually review every prospect for fit. An average sales rep can qualify about 50 prospects per day, which makes it a non-scalable and inefficient operation. Second, marketers and sales people operate in an information void, which makes it hard to determine who is a qualified candidate, as it is hard for a human being to process all of the information on the company, its competitive position and its product offering. You can go to a directory and check out companies in a certain industry, but you can t really tell which one needs your technology, product or service right now. That s why data-driven sales prospecting can make so much sense. At Mintigo, we use a process that profiles your best customers and then searches the Web for additional prospects with similar profiles. Prospecting is time intensive and requires ample time to manually review every prospect for fit

4 The process starts by identifying the CustomerDNA of the company, the unique indicators that comprise an ideal customer. Then, a comprehensive search of millions of companies across the web identifies additional customers with similar CustomerDNA to deliver a group of new customers with a higher likelihood to convert.

5 DATA-DRIVEN SALES PROSPECTING CAN BE ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISIONS YOU MAKE TO IMPACT YOUR SALES PERFORMANCE AND YOUR BOTTOM LINE. HERE ARE FIVE STEPS THAT WILL HELP YOU FIND YOUR IDEAL PROSPECTIVE CUSTOMERS: 1. KNOW YOUR (BEST) CUSTOMERS Before you start looking for more customers, do you know who your ideal prospects are? They are probably similar to your best existing customers. Organizations that know their customers best can do a much better job of growing their business. They know well the value proposition they offer to their customers, and can sell this value proposition clearly. At Mintigo, we call the process of researching your ideal profile. Profiling your customer may not be as straightforward as it sounds. There are thousands of indicators that can impact a customer s fit for your company. While many of these are easy to decipher, such as industry, others are much harder to pinpoint. For example, use of technology on the website. To profile the CustomerDNA, Mintigo takes into account these thousands of indicators and using state of the art statistical modeling calculates which indicators predict the need for your product or service. This way, there is no need to guess or do brand research. The result of the model is quantifiable and verifiable. 2. WHO IS A DECISION-MAKER Even when finding companies who need your product or service, you still need to decide who actually makes the decision to buy your product and who influences them. For example, marketing may ask for campaign management software, but their decision is also influenced by IT, which will need to integrate the solution. After you identify decision makers within the organization, Mintigo can trace specific individuals according to their role. Thus, if the decision-maker in your case is the director of marketing, Mintigo can trace these people and fetch their current address. If you are looking for influencers in the IT department, Mintigo can trace the heads of IT and their addresses as well. The algorithm is very flexible and completely scalable. With inbound leads, you only get the contact information of the individual that filled the form. With data driven lead generation, you can get a full 360-degree view of all of the individuals within your target organization that make or influence the decision to buy your product.

6 3. SEGMENT PROSPECTS BY VALUE In the old days, all sales leads looked more or less the same. The good news is that today it is easy to segment your leads and tell which one are the higher value targets. Not all leads were created equal, and different segments of leads should be engaged in different manners. Segmentation is all about focus. With precise segmentation you can invest more resources in high value targets to keep your ROI high. For example, you can invite high value targets for a seminar, attend a conference that they are attending as well, or network with them. On the other hand, setting up an campaign for the lower value targets is a low cost way to engage prospects lower value, and still maintain a high ROI. In addition, you can make sure that your rain-makers, those reps that close more deals, get on the most valuable leads to make sure that these get closed. This ensures that there are no missed opportunities due to mishandling of high value prospects. How do you segment your best leads? Simply choose representative segments of 150 customers like top-tier and mid-tier customers and create a CustomerDNA for each. The result will be multiple lists of leads that match each CustomerDNA that you created. This way, marketers can allocate the right resources to the right prospect to close more deals on one hand, and still keep their ROI high on the other hand. Segmentation is all about focus. With precise segmentation you can invest more resources in high value targets to keep your ROI high 4. TAILOR YOUR MESSAGE TO THE RIGHT AUDIENCE Relevant messaging boosts the performance of your marketing. There are two levels in which you can tailor your offers to your audience, even within each segment. First, you can tailor your message at the product level. If you have a portfolio of products, you can generate a unique CustomerDNA for each, look for relevant prospects and approach them with relevant messaging. This way, marketers can make sure that they won t lose potential targets because of irrelevant messaging. The second is tailoring the message for the position of the target. Even for the same product, marketers can create different messaging for marketing people and for IT. In each job area, you can present your product s unique value proposition specific to them. For example, for marketing you can speak about easy campaign management, while for IT you can talk about easy set-up and excellent customer support.

7 Technology makes prospecting a lot easier. It can diagnose your existing customers to find the CustomerDNA, and then look at millions of other prospects to find those with similar likelihood of becoming your best customers 5. ALWAYS BE UP-TO-DATE Organizations evolve and people change positions all the time. Therefore, every database or list is obsolete within a short time. Old lists can have an adverse effect on your campaign high bounce rate for s, low response for phone calls, waste of time and frustration for the sales reps. It is not uncommon to hear sales people complain we just don t get any good leads Technology is now changing all of this. When lists are created ad-hoc, from fresh data collected from the Web it is most accurate, and you can rest assure that your contacts are correct, without spending any time or effort on verification. These frustration free leads make sure that your sales reps do not hit a brick wall in every other call, and gives you the most value from your leads. CONCLUSION Accurate prospecting is one of the variables that can make or break your marketing and sales organization. Yet, insufficient data and the time and effort it takes to make sense of it, has made prospecting an insurmountable obstacle for many organizations. Now, technology makes it a lot easier. It can diagnose your existing customers to find the CustomerDNA, and then look at millions of other prospects to find those with similar likelihood of becoming your best customers. This is all automatic, saving time and effort from your team. In addition, it can fetch only the most current contacts from the Web, making sure that your calls get picked up, and s don t bounce back. This process guarantees that you only contact people who have a need for your product and prevent wasting time on prospects that are not likely to convert. Now, when prospecting is all taken care of, you can focus on the real thing closing deals.

8 ABOUT MINTIGO Mintigo is the intelligent lead-generation service. Mintigo delivers a reliable flow of accurate leads precisely matched to your company's offering. Mintigo's customers from around the world have received more than a million trusted Mintigoverified leads. Mintigo's process is easy, scalable, and reliable offering a constant flow of high-quality leads in three simple steps: define the campaign, provide customer examples, and automatically find the best matching new leads. Mintigo takes the guesswork out of the complex customer profiling and lead generation process by automating the entire process of lead discovery and delivery. Just give us the URL's of your best customers and we will deliver to you thousands of the best matched leads out of the millions we have scanned for you. Out of the 20 million businesses in the US, thousands can be great customers for your company and Mintigo knows how to find them. Moreover, Mintigo ranks them and provides updated contact information for the decision makers. In this way, Mintigo provides you a predictable flow of trusted leads into your CRM sales funnel every month. Get a free demo now at info@mintigo.com