Sales intelligence to improve sales performance?

Customer data is the equivalent of gold nuggets in the early days of the Wild West:

"It's very precious, and you just have to bend down to pick it up!"

As I said in the previous article, artificial intelligence can boost the efficiency of your sales organization tenfold in a very short space of time.

Today, I'm going to explain how data can improve your knowledge of prospects and speed up your sales cycles.

How?

Thanks to commercial intelligence... aka your new passion.

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What is business intelligence?

It's all about collecting and analyzing data on your customers/prospects.

Dirty intelligence is based on simple thinking:

Fact 1: Your customer portfolio and prospects generate data that you can collect.

Finding 2: This data can give you a considerable commercial advantage by considerably reducing the uncertainty inherent in the work of salespeople.

> Conclusion: It would be a shame not to take advantage of it!

In practical terms, you can collect two main types of data:

1. Customer data : company profile, target market, behavior since first contact (when did they buy?) , level of satisfaction...
   This first database is all the easier to fill in as your customers provide you with most of the elements themselves. ‍
2. Data relating to prospects: company profile, target market, strategies and objectives, behavior, buying signals...
   This second database is less easy to populate, as you need to deploy tools to collect the available data. The good news? Practical sales intelligence solutions are available! I'll talk about them below.

Once you've gathered this information from internal (or external) sources, you can analyze it, draw conclusions and pass it on to your salesperson or sales manager so that they can refine their approach.

What's in it for you?

Market intelligence is a way of deepening your knowledge of the market and, above all, making it usable.

In practical terms, this allows you to support your salespeople's efforts, by telling them when and how to approach their prospects during their prospecting session. ‍

Timing + good speech = unstoppable.

By the way, sales intelligence is also called "situational"... because it prevents your sales reps from distorting their sales pitch, with e-mails aimed at selling a prime rib to a prospect who became vegan last week (for example). It highlights the right "buying signals" that your sales reps can capitalize on to implement their action plan.

At Modjo, we believe that sales intelligence has at least three advantages:

• Improved pitches: better knowledge of the prospect + data on their latest searches + call history analysis (if available) = we know how to talk to them and hit the mark. ‍
• More efficient sales process: prioritize the most interesting prospects + the right sales pitch for each prospect = more sales, faster.
• And therefore shorter sales cycles: faster lead generation = faster signature.

I'd add a fourth, not insignificant, benefit for your sales force: satisfied salespeople... because you're giving them the best tools to apply new sales techniques to achieve their goals.

‍ How to createyour databases and generate sales information?

Good news: it's simple. It's a three-step process.

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🧲Step1: Collect and analyze external data

What are your sources? The most basic ones are obviously the websites and social networks of your customers and prospects. Regular crawling (software that automatically explores the Web) will give you all you need.

To go beyond these essentials, here are a few tools we like to use at Modjo to get started with sales intelligence:

• ‍ LinkedIn Sales NavigatorThe solution for B2B or B2C prospecting. Target and identify the right prospects, contact them at the right time and present them with a personalized sales pitch, complete with automation capabilities.
• Delete contact DropContact.io: to correct, normalize, duplicate and unify all your contact information in 1 click. DropContact.io finds and collects all your contacts' information accumulated and scattered in your files and various applications.
• Sparklane Sparklane: for intelligent prospect research and the delivery of relevant, actionable data to sales reps. Sparklane enables you to contact the right people at the right time, based on sales signals analyzed and evaluated by leIA.
• Modjo (of course): to record your calls with prospects/customers, then automatically transcribe the exchange in writing. You can then search by subject ("price", "objection", "schedule", "decision-maker", etc.) ‍. Ideal for helping you steer the execution of your sales strategy or policy.‍
• Salesforcewhich connects all these sources and makes them usable thanks to these super dashboards.

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💎Step2: take care of your internal data

Business relationships create their own data. In fact, you already have a lot of information about your old and new customers. (Youhou, the start of the road to sales intelligence)

Secondly, you've undoubtedly generated a great deal of data on your prospects by talking to them. This data is valuable because it's not available anywhere else. This gives you a competitive edge. All you have to do is figure out how to exploit the information gained from your sales activity.

That's the aim of Modjo, which lets you process your interactions to extract unique and valuable information about the prospects you contact, as well as your customers. Behaviors, topical issues, budgets... Modjo classifies it all in a highly visual way to offer you clear, actionable conclusions.

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🚀Step3: start again

When it comes to sales intelligence, consistency is key.

Your prospects are fast-moving. Finding the right information a few days too late can cost you dearly. So make business analysis a regular practice.

• Perhaps you want to know everything about ONE target prospect for a while?
• Perhaps you'll define a palette of prospects and monitor them regularly for buying signals?
• Perhaps you'll naturally approach the prospects about whom you have the most data?

Whatever your strategy, keep up the pace.

After a few months' practice, you'll notice that your entire sales strategy will improve. You'll know your market's wishes better, you'll be able to set more precise priorities - in short, you'll dominate sales instead of letting the wind blow you away.

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Who is responsible for this dirty information?

There are two scenarios.

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First scenario:

You're too small to consider creating a dedicated team. Commercial intelligence should therefore be managed by the sales team (sales representatives and/or managers).

How can we encourage them to do so?

This is where you need to be extremely educational. Clearly explain the benefits of this practice. Invest in a few good tools, chosen with care. Organize training and feedback sessions. And let sales people see for themselves how sales intelligence can help them achieve their business goals.

At Modjo, I've set up a training course on data and the importance of collecting it. In this training, I take the subject back to basics:

• Why data? What are the benefits?
• How do I get it back?
• Where to store it in CRM?
• And above all... "Do you have any other questions? What do you feel?"

... Pedagogy and humanity!

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Second scenario:

You have a sales operations team. They'll be the ones familiarizing themselves with sales intelligence. It's easy, because they love it and are trained to do it.

Even if you have sales operations, be sure to educate your sales staff, as they are the ones who will ultimately use the lessons learned from sales intelligence.

Don't forget that it's a team effort: the more data you have, the more keys you'll have to improve your sales actions, and the more you'll increase your performance.

In a nutshell!

• Sales Intelligence can improve your teams' performance, shorten your sales cycles and accelerate your growth.
• It relies on external data as well as internal data: the combination of the two is the key.
• It rests on two pillars: good tools (including good integration with CRM) and people who know and are trained in these techniques.
• It's important to take care of sales management and think about integrating sales staff and the sales manager (etc.), as the tool's effectiveness depends on their buy-in.

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Best,