UK Social Selling vendor Artesian Solutions announced a set of enhancements to its social selling platform.  Amongst the improvements are an improved CRM connector, “fully customisable” triggers, market sector alerts, employee display filters, and an update to their Ready mobile app.  They are also in the midst of soft launching a US edition with a comparable set of social selling features.

The enhanced CRM connectors for Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics “drive a more dynamic connection between interaction information, business information and market insight for more intuitive and contextualised sales and marketing.”  Among the features are sales trigger filtering by topic and trigger sharing by email, social media, and Chatter.

A new employees page allows users to filter employees by job function and level and set priorities by executive role and level.  The firm has also expanded the depth of executive content including executive overviews and social media links.

Along with market alerts, Artesian has increased the granularity of its market views.  Market alerts may be filtered by industry and country and are delivered weekly.

Artesian also rolled out version 2.3 of its Ready mobile app which provides company and executive insights synched with the mobile calendar.  The service also supports collaborative note taking and a “360° comprehensive profile of customers and prospects.”

New Ready features include Twitter timelines and Twitter sharing (see image on left), social links (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, AngelList, Crunchbase, Klout), job information, and a data quality form for reporting incorrect information.

Rachel Oldroyd, Artesian Product Manager for Mobile commented that Ready “delivers the latest social profile insight straight to users’ fingertips, right up to the very second they go through the meeting room door, for the ultimate in readiness and customer engagement. Its summer launch is very timely, offering a real opportunity to brush off the dust, re-invigorate meetings with new ideas and fresh thinking, and get back into gear ahead of September.”

Ready is available for both Android and iOS devices.

Artesian is priced at $99 per user per month in the US and £89 per user per month in the UK with volume discounting available at higher seat counts.  This pricing is in line with other social selling products such as InsideView and LinkedIn Sales Navigator.  Ready and CRM integrations are included as part of the core service offering along with onboarding, training, and social selling scores.  The firm strongly believes that sales training is key to user adoption so does not charge for custom training sessions.

Social Selling Scores are similar to LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index.  These scores introduce a gamification element to the service helping encourage best practices and ongoing use by sales reps.  Artesian bases its scores on targeting, connecting, and sharing.

Artesian opened a Boston office at the beginning of this year and recently soft launched their US edition.  The firm has not disclosed their primary US vendor but it is a credible source of company and contact information.  The US version supports 4.2 million companies and 400,000 Canadian firms.  Social Selling functionality is similar to the UK product with the exception of filed data not available in the US (e.g. registered company financials; directors and shareholders; mortgages and charges; and Companies House images).  Key features in both services include social selling alerts and sharing, company prospecting, watchlists, and social selling scores.