From Sales "Data" to Sales Intelligence
By Clare Price
We all know that customers are getting more sophisticated in their buyer’s journey. That means we need sales systems that are equally sophisticated in tracking, analyzing and predicting customer behavior. We need better Sales Intelligence.
Sales Intelligence is information used to accelerate the sales process and to improve the performance and productivity of the sales team. What separates Sales “Intelligence” from sales “data” is the level of insight and analysis, increasingly, both real-time and socially influenced, integrated into the solution.
That’s why we produced our latest Solution Study: Sales Intelligence: Insights, Landscape and Vendor Analysis. In our report we look at the range of intelligence products from basic customer and company profiling to solutions capable of providing sophisticated relationship maps to assist sales in engaging with decision makers at key accounts.
The insights and analysis presented in this report are given to provide marketers with a comprehensive understanding of the Sales Intelligence landscape from the perspective of marketing and sales alignment and Sales Enablement. You can download the entire report today in the Resource Center.
At Demand Metric we define a Sales Intelligence Solution as comprising the strategies, processes, technologies and tools that support the collection, integration, analysis, delivery and presentation of insights and information that increase sales.
Sales Intelligence solutions offer a myriad of benefits to the organization. These benefits include applications for “priming the sales pump;” enabling sales productivity; supporting the sales cycle; account control and growth, and support for marketing and sales operations to optimize the sales process.
In the report we group benefits into three stages – before the sale, for activities like prospecting; during the sale, such as increasing the sales engagement with relevant information via social insights; and after the sale for win/loss analysis.
We take a detailed look at the vendors and give you the tools to evaluate which one is right for your organization. Vendors across the Sales Intelligence landscape fall into four tiers based on the features and functionality of their offerings: Basic, Standard, Comprehensive and Cutting-Edge.
At the Basic level, Sales Intelligence focuses on creating company profiles and list building using pre-defined filters to develop qualified sales leads. Cutting-Edge Sales Intelligence pushes the intelligence and analytics envelope to enable true sales-focused business intelligence; contextual data analysis, and predictive analysis for sales planning, sales lead development and account retention.
We provide detailed analysis of the function and features of each tier by vendor solution in the Sales Intelligence Solutions report now available from Demand Metric.
We’ve got more than 10 tools for you in this report. I just want to highlight three of them. First, Use our Sales Intelligence Maturity Assessment to evaluate your organization’s current Sales Intelligence initiatives and programs. Second, develop a solid plan and goals for the next 12-18 months for your Sales Intelligence initiative with our Sales Intelligence Strategy Scorecard. Third, review our Sales Intelligence Vendors Matrix to learn about the key vendors in the Sales Intelligence space and to understand which vendors may work best for your organization.
Effective Sales Enablement is a multi-stage process. In our Sales Enablement Solutions Study Series we examine each key stage of Sales Enablement from initial marketing and sales alignment to the final deal close and revenue capture. In addition to Sales Intelligence Solutions, we examine CRM, Marketing Automation, Enablement Knowledge Management, CPQ, and Sales Communication Tools.
Please visit our Website today to download this and all of our new Solution Study reports.
