InsideView users will be able to validate Direct Dial Phones for contacts.
InsideView is adding Direct Dials to its Sales product. The lack of direct dials is a long-standing gap in its service as competitors have provided these numbers for several years. InsideView for CRM supports uploading and syncing of direct dials.
The new field is currently in beta. InsideView expects to have around two million direct dials in its service by the end of this quarter and is targeting ten million by the end of the year. The majority of the direct dials will be for US execs and mid-level managers.
InsideView currently provides 32 million global contacts with 15 million emails. The contacts span 14 million companies.
InsideView also announced Salesforce encryption support for adding and updating Account, Contact, and Lead records. The firm provided the following caveat, “If you are using deterministic encryption, InsideView will attempt to find existing duplicates as part of the ‘Update CRM” data sync/export. If you are using probabilistic encryption, InsideView won’t be able to query Salesforce for potential duplicates in Salesforce, but your users can still use the “Update CRM” feature.
The Drift SNAP partnership provides LinkedIn intelligence to sales reps as they chat with prospects on the Drift platform.
As part of their Q1 2019 release, LinkedIn rolled out a set of new SNAP (Sales Navigator Application Platform) partners including Altify, Drift, G2 Crowd, and Mixmax.
The Drift partnership allows sales reps to “continue website conversations” after a prospect drops off of a Drift chat: “sometimes people leave your conversation abruptly – it happens. But as an SDR, that’s a potential meeting walking out the door. So what do you do? Well now you can send a connection request or follow up message with InMail right from within Drift.”
The Drift
integration also displays contact and company intelligence including shared
connections while a sales rep is chatting with a prospect visiting her website
(see image on right).
“Gone are
the days of toggling back and forth between LinkedIn and your ongoing sales
conversation,” said Drift Product Marketer Daniel Murphy. “Say goodbye to
awkward lags in conversations. Prospects will never again have to wait for a
response while SDRs search LinkedIn Sales Navigator or Salesforce to determine
if they’re a good fit. Now they can research a prospect’s company, see
mutual connections, and grab other insights and conversation starters – all in
real-time.”
G2 Crowd
gathers intent data from 24 million technology searchers. Intent data is
collected from G2 profile and category views along with competitor comparisons.
Sales reps are notified when followed accounts are researching on G2
based on contact connections, sales preferences, search histories, and profile
interactions.
“People don’t buy today as a result of cold calls and emails. The power is in the hands of the buyers doing more research than ever before. As sales teams, we need to focus on accepting the modern buyer journey and connecting to the right buyers at the right time. We’ve always been aligned with LinkedIn on this vision, and this integration helps us make it a reality.”
G2 Chief Revenue Officer Matt Gorniak
The Mixmax
SNAP integration supports InMail and Connection requests and profile views from
Gmail.
Altify’s
org-chart software now displays insights and helps users identify key buyers
across an organization.
Sales Navigator insights and functionality are displayed alongside Altify’s Relationship Maps.
LinkedIn
also noted that it will be available within the Salesforce Winter 2019 release.
Salesforce admins can install the application from the Lightning Setup
Console instead of the AppExchange.
One problem that
has long dogged sales intelligence vendors is ongoing training and product
exploration. To encourage exploration, Sales Navigator added a coaching
feature to extend product knowledge. Sales Navigator Coach is a new
dashboard that “suggests actions for customers to take and links to short
learning videos.” Actions are associated with core workflows. The
videos run thirty to forty seconds.
The new Sales Navigator Coach provides short videos and tips on key features.
Finally, GDPR opt-outs are being added to PointDrive presentations. PointDrive recipients will be able to revoke viewer tracking permission, effectively anonymizing their viewing data from sales reps.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator rolled out Custom Account and Lead Lists in Q4 and added List Sharing in Q1 2019.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator began rolling out its Q1 release two weeks ago. New features include custom list sharing, Sales Navigator Coach, list building exclusion filters, new Sales Navigator Application Platform (SNAP) integrations, and an expanded set of technologies selects.
LinkedIn
Sales Solutions VP of Product Management Doug Camplejohn was most excited about
custom list sharing, noting that that “selling is a team sport.”
Team members
can share lists with other users on their contracts, share comments, and sort
by “Last Updated” date so sales reps can stay apprised of updated leads and
accounts. Sales Navigator notifies users when lists are being shared with
them. However, lists reside only in LinkedIn and are not downloadable.
“Now we’re taking lists up a notch by adding the ability for you to share these custom lists between your team members and have comments shared as well. Sales Development Reps can collaborate with Account Executives on their team and share progress on breaking into new accounts. Relationship Managers and Customer Success Representatives can collaborate around the health of their named accounts throughout the customer lifecycle. And Marketing can easily share lists from events with the teams following up on new leads. The possibilities are endless.”
Doug Camplejohn, VP of Product Management, LinkedIn Sales Solutions
LinkedIn has
long described Sales Navigator as a system of engagement that worked with
systems of record (CRM) and communication (email, social). Much of the
initial focus was on lead messaging and SNAP connectors, but the firm is now
placing a greater focus on teamwork. Shared lead lists are “the first
step in a broader strategy to enable collaboration across your selling teams,”
wrote the firm.
Lead lists were released in Q4 and quickly employed by users. 250,000 custom lists were created within the first six weeks of availability. A quarter of active users created custom lists post-launch.
Users can
also save Leads and Accounts to custom Lists from partner applications via
their broad set of SNAP partners.
LinkedIn
stated that “sharing increases visibility of and fosters collaboration for your
pipeline.” Custom lists help teams organize and plan for key leads and
accounts within lists: “Sharing allows them to collaborate with others as they
research, contact, and advance relationships with those Leads and Accounts.”
Users can
track team outreach to prospects, share leads with managers to discuss
strategy, segment by source, and customize follow-on activities.
Other screening enhancements include the expansion of technology selects to 30,000 technologies and the addition of seven categories of exclusion criteria for leads: company, geography, seniority level, title, function, industry and school. Account exclusions are provided for geography and industry. Camplejohn noted that exclusion filters were one of the top user requests.
Part II covers SNAP partners, SFDC Lightning Setup Console integration, and the new Sales Navigator Coach
The Mattermark Account I-Frame in the Salesforce AppExchange supports both company news and an account overview with over 80 fields. The service is reasonably priced at $49 / user / month.
Mattermark is back as an independent company after being acquired by FullContact in late 2017. Unfortunately, the acquisition announcement was mishandled with FullContact first saying the product was going away and later saying that it was still available.
The relaunched
Mattermark attracted back much of its early staff including its founders
Danielle and Kevin Morrill and Product Lead Paul Denya. The firm has a
“renewed focus on private deal intelligence.”
“This transition has been in the works for the past few months without disruption to services. You have our assurance that will continue to be the case.”
Eric Milliken
To support
the relaunch, Mattermark is adding headcount to their customer service,
engineering, and data teams “to redouble our commitment to customer
satisfaction and data excellence.”
Mattermark data coverage spans 4 million companies, company news, and funding data. Users can leverage public lists or build shared lists. Mattermark also supports an API, Salesforce integration, Chrome extension, Google Sheets, and lead and account enrichment.
TechTarget’s new Confirmed Project details are collected by their research assistants.
TechTarget added a set of Confirmed Projects to their Priority Engine service. Projects include company information, project location, project contact name, purchase criteria, and purchase details. Purchase criteria include top purchase drivers, product feature criteria, and vendors under consideration.
Purchase
details include capabilities being considered, key factors in choice of
vendor(s), deployment method, departments where the purchase will be used, and
anticipated benefits.
“The integration of Confirmed Project intelligence within the platform provides an expanded view of the Total Buying Team as well as new deal insights and angles – all in one place – to help Sales teams win more meetings, opportunities and deals. The addition of Confirmed Project data provides a much deeper layer of intelligence on project criteria, specific vendor shortlists and key purchase drivers which enriches and expands insights available within Priority Engine to give sales teams more points of entry into live deals.”
TechTarget Press Release
Confirmed
Projects are displayed alongside TechTarget intelligence including Owler
company overviews, TechTarget buying teams, DiscoverOrg contacts, and HG Data
installed technologies.
TechTarget Confirmed Projects are displayed within Salesforce Account i-frames.
Confirmed
Projects are collected by TechTarget’s “team of skilled in-house research
assistants who are responsible for calling active prospects from high-ranking
Priority Engine accounts.” Prospects exchange project intelligence in
exchange for TechTarget research.
TechTarget intelligence is accessible from “any browser and imported directly into Salesforce.”
“We saw rapid growth in the use of Priority Engine to fuel inside sales efforts in 2018 as more and more of our customers’ sales teams are using the insights we provide into prospect interests, research focus, vendor considerations, and tech installs. Using this data, leading sales teams have seen up to a 4x increase in opportunity conversion. The addition of Confirmed Projects within Priority Engine will fuel this growth even more.”
TechTarget SVP of Products Andrew Briney
Priority Engine raised revenues 29% in Q4 year-over-year and “bookings remain strong.” The firm signed an additional 32 customers in Q4 and the firm raised Priority Engine prices by 10% in January 2019 after raising them 20% in January 2018. The price increase was across all Priority Engine solutions. As price increases are recognized over the life of contracts and renewals are overweighted to Q4, much of the 2018 price increase will show up in 2019 revenues.
“People that
signed up prior to the beginning of the year were protected in their previous
year’s pricing, but then we added other add-on bundles and solutions,
because…we are integrating a lot of our branding lead generation offers into
Priority Engine,” said CEO Mike Cotoia. “So there is an up-sell
capability and opportunity for our customers to…create a greater share of voice
percentage within the markets they care about.”
“Our customers continue to increase their commitment to becoming data-driven sales and marketing organizations. This is creating opportunities to strengthen our partnerships with our customers by further embedding our purchase intent data into their systems to make their sales and marketing efforts more intelligent, competitive and efficient.”
TechTarget Shareholders Letter, February 6, 2019
TechTarget admitted that the data subscription business differs significantly from their traditional quarterly marketing campaigns. Over the past two years, they have learned that service requirements vary greatly by size. Larger firms “who have sophisticated systems and ample resources” can immediately leverage intent data for awareness campaigns and fueling sales outreach. Enterprise accounts have revenue renewal rates “well over 100%.” However, smaller firms require more handholding and renew at less than 100% of revenue. To assist SMBs, TechTarget has assembled a unified customer success team to offer post-sales service and support. “We believe over time that this will increase our revenue renewal rates with this customer segment. “
TechTarget described a strong IT spending environment with multiple catalysts for growth: AI, security, data analytics, and cloud migrations. In the US, accelerated depreciation of capital expenses through 2022 gives “companies a short window to invest in technology with favorable tax treatment.”
Sales Navigator now supports custom Account and Lead lists.
LinkedIn rolled out its Q4 Sales Navigator release in November, but I failed to blog about it. (Q1 will be covered next week in this blog.) The release contains several nascent initiatives including custom lists and the collection of “Reports To” data to assist with organizational mapping. Other feature sets include three new alerts, an improved accounts center, PointDrive activity logging, and additional SNAP connectors.
LinkedIn is
beginning to collect data around who reports to whom. As sales reps or
others learn about reporting relationships, they can add them to executive
profiles. The data is then shared across the LinkedIn contract with
co-workers but not more broadly. Following after last quarter’s support
of buying committees, it is evident that LinkedIn is looking to infuse
additional project and reporting relationships within Sales Navigator.
“We’re
laying the foundation for full-blown org charts by adding a new “Reports To” field
on the Lead Page,” blogged Head of Products for LinkedIn Sales Solutions Doug
Camplejohn. “Once you learn who someone’s manager is, you can add that
info to their page by searching for a name or browsing our recommendations. Any
additions you or your colleagues make will only appear to those in your
company’s Sales Navigator contract. So, the next time you or a team member
looks that lead up, you’ll see who they report to, who added that connection,
and a reporting history.”
An unlimited
number of custom lists of accounts or leads may be built within the LinkedIn
desktop or mobile app. Users may post notes on saved leads or accounts and
filter the lists by people who have changed jobs in the last 90 days, people
who have posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days, companies who have had senior
leadership changes in the past 3 months, etc.
LinkedIn does not yet support custom list uploading. Custom Sharing is part of the Q1 release.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator added three new alerts
LinkedIn added three new alerts:
Someone at a saved account viewed your profile
A saved account has just raised funding
A saved lead has engaged with LinkedIn posts from your company
which
accompany six current alerts:
A saved lead started a position at a new company
A saved lead has a new position within the same company
A saved lead viewed your profile
A potential lead recently joined a saved account
A saved lead has accepted your connection request
A saved lead was mentioned in the news
Alerts are
now included in the main menu bar of both the desktop and mobile editions. Camplejohn
noted that LinkedIn has improved the “signal-to-noise ratio” of its alerts.
“Think of
our Alerts as a trusted sales advisor tapping you on the shoulder with
information about your saved leads and accounts when it’s most important and
relevant to you,” said Camplejohn.
LinkedIn has
simplified its admin experience and “made it much easier to do tasks from
assigning users to managing groups.” LinkedIn also unified its
administration module across Sales Navigator, LinkedIn Learning, and LinkedIn
Recruiter.
Advanced
Searching was added to the Sales Navigator mobile app, bringing it to list
building parity with the desktop application. Earlier this year, LinkedIn
enhanced its company and lead profiles, also bringing them to parity with the
desktop application.
“LinkedIn’s recent updates to its Sales Navigator management tool makes it a more robust platform for sales teams. More importantly, the moves to bring more of its desktop features to the mobile app are evidence that LinkedIn finally understands how crucial a mobile experience is when designing a sales tool focused on lead management.”
Amy Gesenhues, MarTech Today
PointDrive,
Sales Navigator’s multi-media sharing application, will begin writing activity
history back to Microsoft Dynamics. Salesforce PointDrive sync will come
in 2019. PointDrive presents documents and video to end users as a
landing page and tracks views and shares.
“Now when
you send that pricing proposal to a prospect in PointDrive and members of the
buying committee engage with it, you’ll be able to see that activity in both
Sales Navigator and your CRM,” blogged Camplejohn.
LinkedIn continues
to expand its SNAP
partnerships, adding Zoom as their first
web conferencing partner. Users can now hover over an attendee name and
view Sales Navigator intelligence including their profile photo, title, and
common connections.
The Zoom LinkedIn SNAP integration provides meeting attendee insights and connections from within Zoom.
Four vendors
launched v2 SNAP integrations which provide broader access to Sales Navigator
actions:
In the
Salesforce Winter Lightning release, admins will be able to configure Sales
Navigator and add support for Person accounts without having to go to the
AppExchange.
This year, Sales Navigator focused on improved functionality and display for accounts, leads, and list building in their mobile and desktop applications; SNAP integrations; GDPR compliance and security; CRM opportunity management and buyers circles; alerting; employment analytics; and PointDrive CRM integration. Details on earlier releases are available in my blog: Q1, Q2, Q3.
If a US public company, look at its 10-K (annual report). Firms generally discuss their competitors. You can locate the 10-K on a company’s investor site, through sales intelligence vendors, or free Edgar sites.
If a private company, look at Owler, a free site (See below). This is crowdsourced so may include firms that aren’t true competitors.
Owler competitor lists are gathered through social voting.
Look at sales intelligence services such as D&B Hoovers or InsideView. Hoover’s competitors are editorially generated and include top three flags (see below)
D&B Hoover’s competitor lists are gathered by a team of researchers.
Within IT, look at Forrester Wave reports. Another option is technology category searches in PE/VC databases such as DataFox, Crunchbase, Pitchbook, or CB Insights. Keep in mind that companies within the same segment may not be competitors, but partners, customers, etc.
Many industries have industry specific market research that includes competitors. A few general market research firms also provide competitors (e.g. MarketLine, Euromonitor, Global Data, and Freedonia). Top Competitors are also available in IBISWorld, Vertical IQ, and First Research.
Zoominfo and a few other vendors identify similar companies based upon proximity in articles. This finds competitors, but also customers and partners so should be carefully reviewed.
For new technologies or industries, D&B Hoovers offers Conceptual Search which identify companies associated with key phrases (e.g. Marcellus Shale, Obamacare). This is more of an associated companies list and will identify firms in a topical ecosystem. For example, “Harry Potter” identifies studios, publishers, toy makers, theme parks, and thematic tours. (See example below of conceptual search on Marcellus Shale). Conceptual Search lists may be refined by standard prospecting filters such as industry, geography, and size.
D&B Hoover’s Conceptual Search looks for companies associated with specific phrases.
If none of these work, use peer list searches (industry code lists) or keyword searches in sales intelligence vendors. If cost is a concern, go to your public library and see if they have ReferenceUSA, AtoZDatabases, or Mergent Online. Each of these allows you to build peer lists based on industry codes, company size, and geography. If you need help, ask for the business or reference librarian to assist.
Dun & Bradstreet completed its privatization Friday morning. The firm is now controlled by CC Capital, Cannae Holdings, Bilcar, LLC, Black Knight, Inc. and funds affiliated with Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. The original offer was tendered on August 8, 2018.
As previously announced, the firm will be led by new CEO Anthony Jabbour and new President Stephen C. Daffron. William P. Foley II has been named the Executive Chairman of Dun & Bradstreet’s Board of Directors.
The new
leadership team indicated that the mission of the firm, “to help our customers
improve their business performance through data and insights,” is unchanged.
Likewise, there are no significant changes in direction. “We plan to
invest in several key areas to strengthen our core data assets, create
high-value analytics, enhance our technological capabilities, and deliver a
top-notch customer experience.”
The firm is
positioning privatization as a strategic advantage. “We now have greater
flexibility to build a competitive advantage in the vibrant market for data and
insights; an edge that we are confident will benefit our customers. Now more
than ever, we will have the opportunity to offer solutions to accelerate
revenue, reduce cost, manage risk and transform businesses. We plan to invest
in several key areas to strengthen our core data assets, create high-value
analytics, enhance our technological capabilities, and deliver a top-notch
customer experience.”
“For 177 years, our mission has been to help customers leverage data and insights to improve business performance. The next evolution of Dun & Bradstreet’s history will expand the value we bring to our customers around the globe. The journey ahead is a big one for all of us, and the potential, vast. Our executive team and employees around the globe are excited to work with our customers and partners on this next chapter in our iconic brand’s history.”
Dun & Bradstreet Announcement
Dun & Bradstreet
was purchased by the investor group for $145 per share ($6.9 billion when
including acquired debt of $1.5 billion)
Dun & Bradstreet posted $1.7 billion in 2017 revenue. The firm employs 4,900 globally and provides risk management (supplier and credit risk) and sales & marketing services. Key product include RMI, D&B Hoovers, D&B Optimizer, and Audience Solutions. Its D-U-N-S Numbering system is the de facto global company numbering system and often required by banks and federal contracting. Other key assets include their global company linkages and the WorldBase file of 300 million active and inactive companies.
The New RelPro Finance tab includes a stock chart, funding data, IPO intelligence, finance news, and investors.
Relationship Intelligence vendor RelPro added Crunchbase funding, firmographics, and news content to its service, providing customers with greater insights on fast growing small and mid-size companies. RelPro focuses on B2B business development across marketing, sales, relationship management, and research.
“RelPro users are looking for smarter, more efficient ways to build
relationships with fast-growing companies,” said RelPro CEO Martin Wise. “By
adding Crunchbase data to the RelPro platform our customers will save time,
they will gain additional analytics to identify new company prospects, and they
will benefit from new research insights to help them develop informed
relationships and turn those prospects into clients.”
The new content set provides additional company intelligence, analytics, and filters. RelPro profiles seven million companies and 150 million business decision makers. Other content partners include BoardEx, Dun & Bradstreet, ZoomInfo, and HG Data.
The Crunchbase dataset supports new filters include Funding Round and
Funding Total Amount. RelPro also added a new finance tab to company
profiles.
“As Crunchbase builds its overall partner network, the combination of our business intelligence with RelPro’s platform will provide value to their clients and increase the reach of Crunchbase’s premium data, getting that valuable information in front of the people who need it most.”
Nealesh Patel, Head of Business Development and Sales for Crunchbase.
RelPro hinted at additional analytics and data partner announcements in
2019. One feature in development is a “look-a-like” companies list to
assist with business development.
RelPro more than doubled its subscription revenues in 2018.
Owler promises 60 second access to the platform with one-click Salesforce permissioning.
Sales and competitive intelligence vendor Owler is readying to launch Owler Pro, its first end-user premium service. Pro reads the open Leads, Accounts, and Opportunities in Salesforce and begins delivering automated alerts to sales reps. Owler Pro supports single-click sign-on so no Salesforce admin support is required. The service is currently in beta test and includes a redesign of their Instant Insights email alert design.
“In short, it’s an ad-free, streamlined way for Saleforce.com users to automatically sync their active opportunities with Owler, and auto-follow those companies on Owler. So, a sales person’s Daily Snapshot will always be relevant to the deals they are currently working on.”
Owler CEO Tim Harsch
The service is designed for sales reps, but Owler plans to support competitive intelligence analysts, marketing professionals, and senior level executives in the future.
Owler Pro,
which is expected to launch in mid to late February, is priced at $12.99 per
month or $119.88 annually. During the beta, users receive one free month,
but they are undecided on whether that offer will continue following general
user rollout.
The premium
service also alerts on a broader set of topics. While the free version
focuses on M&A activity, funding events, and exec changes, the Pro edition
adds an additional dozen triggers:
Product Launches
Joint Ventures
Partnerships
Awards
New Offices
IPO Announcements (a precursor to the closing of the actual funding)
Record Earnings
Earnings Announcements
Restructuring
Key Employee Departures
Key Employee Hires (in addition to primary leadership which are included in the free version)
Layoffs
According
Harsch, the goal is to “arm sales reps with sales triggers.”
Owler also
recently rolled out a Lightning Data solution which performs a monthly match
and append against Salesforce Accounts. 36 fields are supported including
the top three competitors and social media links. The service is priced
at $25 per user per month for all users in the instance.
The
Lightning Data solution includes a free self-assessment report which analyzes
Owler’s match and append rate against Salesforce Accounts and includes segmentation
data.
Owler has 2
½ million active users, up from 1.1 million a year ago. Nearly half of
users are located in the Sales or Marketing department and forty percent are
directors or above. An additional 17% describe themselves as Analysts,
Consultants, or Specialists.
Owler user base demographics
Owler is also available through its API partners including CrunchBase, SalesLoft, SugarCRM, and Salesforce Lightning Data.
Owler
collects data on over 11 million companies including four million full
profiles.
