Everything You Need to Know About Sales Intelligence

When it comes to sales, more often than not, prospects expect customization at every stage of the sales cycle; which is impossible without accurate and relevant data to work with. That is exactly why you need a sales intelligence platform. 

With sales intelligence, your sales teams can automate research to better customize outreach. An important thing to remember is that you should only book meetings with qualified prospects – you can use prospecting software for that. 

Approaching prospects who don’t meet your ideal customer profile renders the whole sales intelligence point moot.

What Is Sales Intelligence?

Getting technical, Sales intelligence is the intel that sales teams use to make informed decisions in the sales cycle. A lot goes into sales intelligence, including tools, techniques, and practices that facilitate data collection, tracking as well as analysis of data. 

All this data is used for sales lead qualification, creating an ideal customer profile, as well as lead generation.

Choosing the Right Sales Intelligence Platform

An actionable platform should provide you with information about individual contacts as well as their businesses – it’s for B2B businesses after all.

Here is what you should look out for:

Real-Time Alerts

Thanks to technology, all the tools are automated and last I checked, technology doesn’t take vacations or power naps so monitoring of contacts is round the clock. 

With real-time alerts, you can be informed of any changes or progress in the process. Focus on buying signals like product launches or changes in executive leadership. 

Sales are all about timing so you need to get your hands, or eyes for that matter, on this critical information before anyone else does.

Prospecting Intelligence

There is no point in prospecting software if it can’t provide you with accurate and updated information about your potential customers. 

Information you need for prospecting includes contact information, job function, employment history, and organizational charts.

Intent Data

Intent data is updated information that can help infer a prospect’s likelihood of purchasing a product. Information like a flurry of web searches or content searches on a certain topic is what I am talking about. Intent data is essentially opportunity data and is the hallmark of sales intelligence. 

The reason it is so is that intent data is not just a bunch of raw data. Intent data provides you with on-point, opportunity data that without a doubt give you the edge over your competition in timing your outreach.

How You Can Use Sales Intelligence Platforms

Creating an Ideal Customer Profile

If you want to succeed in any business, especially a B2B business, you can’t go around targeting everyone. You need to target a certain niche and dominate that space until it’s possible to use it as a launching pad for expansion.

Sales and marketing teams work together to create an ideal customer profile. The basis of creating an ideal customer profile is by analyzing your current customer base and finding commonalities.

Sales Lead Qualification

After you have your leads, it is now time to qualify them or disqualify them from the sales process. Of course, you begin by ensuring you have the right contact data so you don’t waste time trying to contact prospects who have moved on already.

This is very important because, at this stage, your sales team is dealing with people who have the same challenges so it is considerably easier to get through to them and position your product as the answer to all their problems.