How to Make the Most of Sales Intelligence8 min read

Modern buyers are demanding. 

No wonder when they have an abundance of purchasing options.  

They expect nothing short of hyper-personalized and perfectly-tailored messaging when you reach out to them. They want you to understand them, know what their pain is, and offer them the right solution. 

And for that, you need to step up your sales intelligence game and start leveraging data collection methods to the fullest. 

But, sales data goes well beyond having your prospects’ phone numbers and email addresses, though these seemingly superficial bits of information can be hard to collect. 

Sales intelligence refers to a wide range of tech solutions that lend sales and marketing teams comprehensive insight into their prospects’ behaviors, buying patterns, budget, decision-making, and similar actionable data. 

How Can You Benefit from Sales Intelligence? 

A successful sales cycle is both effective and efficient, which means that you don’t have time to waste on warming up and engaging subpar leads that aren’t the right fit for your product. 

By implementing sales intelligence throughout your sales process will result in a significant increase of new opportunities and closed deals.

A research study by Forrester and ZoomInfo reports that companies that implemented sales intelligence saw 35% more leads in their pipeline and a 45% increase in higher-quality leads. 

Here’s how sales intelligence makes this possible. 

1. Better Data Quality 

Having clean, high-quality data at your fingertips at every moment is a must if you’re a salesperson. 

The trouble is we live in a fast-paced world in which people change their jobs, positions, phone numbers, and email addresses quickly. This leads to significant data decay that will render your contact lists unusable and obsolete. 

As a result, your prospecting efforts will fall flat and you’ll face high bounce rates, irrelevant and misaligned messaging, calling wrong numbers, and getting blacklisted for spam.

With the help of sales intelligence, you’ll always have access to up-to-date, complete, relevant, and accurate information. Only then will you be able to dial and email confidently, knowing that you’ll reach the right people interested in your product or service and engage them with relevant messages. 

2. Improved Sales Team Productivity 

Back in the day, salespeople were usually tasked with mining for prospects on the internet, social media, and other channels. 

However, their job is to book appointments and close sales, meaning they’re only wasting their time and energy on this menial and tedious task. 

Similarly, using bad data is pretty frustrating as your sales team will lose any motivation if their attempts to reach a prospect or engage them don’t materialize due to bad data. 

Sales intelligence provides your sales team with everything they need in order to prepare for their sales calls. Also, taking the task of looking for new leads manually will free up a lot of their time. Use a modern data stack to proactively analyze your data to find areas of improvement and opportunities in your business, saving time, money, and effort.

Working with high-quality leads will boost their productivity and sales results. 

3. More Accurate Sales Forecasting 

When you have more detailed information about the quantity and quality of the sales leads that are coming into your pipeline, it’s much easier to create accurate sales forecasts. 

For example, using historical data can be of tremendous help when it comes to identifying deals most likely to close and prospects interested in your product or service. 

It’s safe to say that sales intelligence is indispensable for generating predictable revenue and growth plans. 

4. Reducting the Impact of Internal Churn

Apart from customer attrition that’s a real threat to your bottom line, there’s another type of churn that can impact your sales process – internal. 

When employees responsible for your target accounts leave, organizations that don’t implement sales intelligence are in trouble. The onboarding process and filling a new account manager in on everything they have to know about the customer takes time. But if you’ve implemented sales intelligence, this entire handoff becomes breezy and effortless. 

Besides that, when your salespeople work with clean data, they won’t throw darts in the dark which will make them more confident and successful. This will, in turn, reduce your internal churn rate. 

What Types of Data Fuel Sales Intelligence? 

There are different types of sales data you sales team needs in order to do their job properly. 

Also, let’s not forget that your sales team consists of different sales roles, such as sales reps and account executives, that require different data so that they could engage prospects in the sales process stage they’re responsible for. 

1. Prospect Data

This is the kind of data you need for creating your buyer personas. 

It consists of demographic and firmographic data.

Demographic data

This kind of data contains details such as the background, education, professional experience and accolades, role within the organization, and anything else that might help your sales reps craft an effective pitch. 

Demographic data is necessary for connecting with a particular person within the organization you’re targeting. 

Firmographic Data

If we’re talking about business demographics, then we’re referring to the industry, size, number of employees, revenue, locations, budget, products or services the organization offers, or recent fundings and acquisitions. 

The more information you have about the organization, the better offer you’ll be able to create. For example, it’s a good idea to obtain some hard-to-find insider financial information. 

2. Technographic Data 

When you’re selling software or any kind of B2B service, knowing what solutions a prospect company uses is a valuable piece of information. 

That’s what technographic data is all about and with it, you can understand how to your product or service fits into your prospect’s tech stack. 

3. Intent Data 

The right timing is everything in sales. 

So, knowing when your prospect is ready to buy is something that could help you act in a timely manner and seal the deal. 

Intent data is one of the most crucial features of every sales intelligence platform, as it monitors and analyzes specific buyin signals, and informs you when it’s the right moment to ask contact your prospect with a sales proposal. 

Ways to Use Sales Intelligence to Land More Deals 

It’s worth mentioning that your sales data doesn’t worth much without additional context that sales intelligence adds. 

Here are some ways you can use this powerful technology in your sales efforts. 

1. Discover New Leads 

Lead generation is one of the most challenging aspects of every sales rep’s job, and sales intelligence takes the stress out of this activity. 

For example, Autoklose’s Sales Intelligence & Data comes with a huge database packed with close to 40 million clean and verified B2B leads from different industries.

There are different filters you can use to cherry-pick leads based on different parameters and demographic data. 

2. Personalize Your Outreach 

We’ve already mentioned that customers won’t even bother to respond if your outreach isn’t highly personalized. 

That’s why you need to know their roles, levels, and experience in order to craft a personalized pitch, and Autoklose B2B Database offers all the information you need for that.

In addition to that, you can specifically target decision-makers and reach them as early as possible in the sales process. 

3. Keep Your Pipeline Full With Relevant Leads 

By focusing all your energy on closing deals, you risk depleting your pipeline. 

And with Autoklose, you can set your prospecting to autopilot and always have some fresh leads to engage. We regularly add new leads to the database, perform detailed scrubbing, formatting, and deduplication of leads, so that you don’t have to worry about that. 

You can also integrate Autoklose with your CRM and other sales tool and seamlessly import and export your sales data between them, thus streamlining your sales process. 

4. Qualify (and Disqualify) Your Leads 

Identifying qualified leads and disqualifying those that aren’t the right fit for your company is essential. 

Autoklose features a sophisticated scoring system that ranks leads based on their engagement and allows you to determine the ones you should focus on or those that are most likely to become paying customers. 

Conclusion

Sales intelligence has become an indispensable ingredient of an effective sales tech stack. Learning how to implement and take advantage of its numerous capabilities will transform your good sales team into a great one.