B2B data vendor Clearbit posted a demonstration video of its ChatGPT plugin that supports Reveal (visitor intelligence), Enrich, and Prospector API calls, helping marketers build free-form queries against Clearbit’s intelligence. For example, marketers can ask for lists of companies or contacts that match their ICP and demonstrate clear intent. They can also identify firms displaying clear purchase intent over the past week by analyzing Clearbit’s Weekly Visitor Report data.
In the demo, ChatGPT-4 queries are executed against Clearbit to identify three large companies in Japan. No coding knowledge is required, with ChatGPT leveraging Clearbit’s business intelligence API and Whimsical’s account mapping service.
A follow-on query displays a Whimsical account map of Rakuten execs sourced from Clearbit.
Rakuten exec account map, collected from Clearbit and processed through Whimsical, displayed in ChatGPT.
“With this plugin, anyone—be it a marketer, sales professional, or even a curious individual—can now create and utilize the same complex sales and marketing workflows that were once reserved for the most highly technical growth teams. It breaks down the walls that have long separated the technical growth hackers from the rest of the business world.”
Clearbit Group Product Manager Zachary Swetz
By grounding ChatGPT with business intelligence, Clearbit addresses the issues of data latency and hallucinations related to firmographic and contact queries. Furthermore, when third-party plugins are deployed, ChatGPT cites them, addressing the problem of attribution and GDPR compliance (as Clearbit is compliant). ChatGPT also displays which plugins are enabled within the model.
“While ChatGPT is extremely powerful, go-to-market teams currently can’t fully capitalize on its potential due to its out-of-date data—ChatGPT’s current knowledge cutoff is March 23rd, and it has limited knowledge of the world and events after 2021. And, it has a tendency to hallucinate, producing answers that seem accurate, but are incorrect,” wrote Swetz. “To remedy this, we’re bringing Clearbit’s reliable and accurate data to ChatGPT to make it an incredibly valuable tool for sales, marketing, and operations professionals.”
Nearly two-thirds of business buyers (64%) were born after 1980 and are taking a different approach to purchasing than their older colleagues. While direct purchasing from vendors remains the primary route, self-directed research and purchasing channels (e.g., external marketplaces, app stores, vendor websites, and existing products / product-led growth) are becoming increasingly popular.
“As self-service transactions rise in popularity, providers must understand the behaviors of their target buyers to create seamless experiences that are easy to find, easy to use, and align to their preferences,” argued Forrester Analysts Amy Hayes and Barbara Winters.
The pair noted that information gathering is similar across all generations, with a near-even split between personal and self-guided buyers. However, younger buyers place a greater emphasis on independent information resources such as technology information websites, forums/message boards, and industry websites.
TechTarget CIO is one of over 150 enterprise technology and HealthTech research sites.
This youth movement was echoed on TechTarget’s earnings call last week. TechTarget publishes over 150 opted-in enterprise software and HealthTech websites and generates intent data from research activities (They also own the BrightTALK webinar and digital content platform).
This shift towards increased research resulted in a 50% increase in organic search-based visits to TechTarget’s technology research sites over the past year.
“High quality, independent content has always been the foundation of our business. As the demographics of technology buyers skew younger, they want to self-service their purchase diligence and minimize contact with vendor sales reps until very late in the purchase process. Most vendors’ go-to-market processes are sales-rep-centric, which we believe is causing a disconnect with what buyers want. As a result, our expectation is that vendors will be forced to transform their go-to-market processes to be aligned with how and when buyers engage. Smart vendors are doing this today by creating more buyer-oriented content to provide regular touchpoints with prospects outside of sales rep engagement.”
TechTarget CEO Michael Cotoia
“Over 50% of technology buyers wanted a rep-less experience, which means they really rely on content to make all decisions about 6, 7, [and] 8-figure acquisitions that they want. They can’t be fooled by thin, broad-based, irrelevant content that’s not recent,” argued Cotoia. “So being able to help our customers tie in those insights to help empower their content strategy will be an effective place for us…as a publisher and as a community with proprietary first-party data insights.”
“This is a wake-up call for providers to contemplate how their demand, customer engagement, and reputation programs for earned media coverage align to how and where buyers look for information.”
Younger purchasers are also more likely to be dissatisfied with the buying experience. “Buyer-facing roles must understand the holistic experience from the buyer’s perspective,” advised Forrester.
Intent data vendor Bombora analyzed its topical data to gauge economic concerns and how they may play out across B2B research. While economic growth is up 60%, economic downturn is up 119% year-over-year, and market volatility has spiked 149%. Likewise, layoffs (109%) are far outpacing hiring (42%).
“In general, what we’re seeing is a shift in focus from business growth to business resiliency. In fact, July 2022 actually marked the first time we’ve seen the volume of searches for resiliency surpass those for growth,” blogged Hsiaolei Miller, Bombora VP Insights & Partner Success. “So, instead of focusing on advertising and launching new products, B2B businesses have been investing more of their time and energy into understanding how to maintain their current business through retaining their customers, encouraging renewals, and other strategies.”
Business Resilience topics are surging (Source: Bombora Market Insights)
Thus, Brand and Demand is the primary focus of businesses, with searching on customer expansion and RevOps becoming more important. Last year, growth-oriented topics outpaced more “maintenance-focused” topics. However, these topics have achieved rough parity.
Moreover, research in Brand and Demand topics has shifted towards inbound efforts and away from outbound marketing.
Inbound Marketing research is growing and outbound is in decline Business Resilience topics are surging (Source: Bombora Market Insights).
“With cost pressures mounting, businesses need to focus on extracting as much value and engagement possible from the customers in their pipeline vs. going through the process to find net-new customers,” argued Miller. “Businesses still want new business, but they want to be more efficiently capturing and capitalizing on every lead that comes into the pipeline. This can be seen in the increased research into retargeting and conversational marketing strategies and the increase in interest in general inbound marketing software.”
Bombora also found increases in research related to customer expansion (upsell, cross-sell) and time to value.
“Customer expansion involves creating more value for your business by selling your existing customers more of your product or service. Customer TTV is the time it takes until the ‘Aha! moment’ when a customer realizes the expected value of your product,” stated Miller. “Businesses are looking to accomplish both of these goals through investments in customer support automation vs. traditional customer support, which aims to maximize efficiency while also lowering overall customer support costs.”
On Salesforce’s earnings call this month, co-CEO Bret Taylor argued that executives are focusing on time to value and digital transformation benefits (e.g., cost savings, customer satisfaction, and top-line growth) when evaluating digital investments.
Ross Graber, Principal Analyst at Forrester, came to a similar conclusion in his 2023 B2B predictions. “In light of economic uncertainty, B2B organizations will strive to grow in the places they know and the places they understand. As a result, B2B growth strategies will tilt heavily toward retention, cross-sell, and upsell revenues. Growing revenues within the existing customer base requires not only great products and services, but strong customer relationships.”
Sales and Operations Planning had the biggest jump in topical research in Q3, up 386% year-over-year. RevOps looks to align sales, marketing, and customer success across the customer lifecycle. RevOps looks to address questions such as how do we get and keep customers?
“During times of uncertainty, businesses are less focused on casting wide nets for new customers and taking big risks, and more focused on squeezing the value out of the customers they already have in their pipeline,” stated Miller.
Clearbit leverages first and second-party intent data for building and activating audiences.
B2B data vendor Clearbit is the latest firm to announce a partnership with G2 to deliver G2’s second-party technology intent data. The G2 feed will be available alongside Clearbit’s firmographics, contacts, and Reveal visitor intelligence.
“For any company that shows up in your defined Audiences, Capture automatically creates new accounts and key contacts (from our database of marketable and verified contacts) directly in Salesforce,” blogged Clearbit CMO Kevin Tate. “This way, your marketing and sales teams can focus on engaging the right people, based on role and title, from the companies you care about.”
Clearbit offers B2B data enrichment, audience building, visitor intelligence, and web forms to over 1,500 customers, including Segment (Twilio), Intercom, HubSpot, Asana, and Atlassian. Clearbit’s reference database gathers insights on 44 million companies and 350 million contacts.
“Marketers know that engaging the right companies at the right time is key, but with increased pressure to build high-quality pipeline, it’s never been more critical. With G2 and Clearbit, teams can now leverage the powerful combination of company fit and buyer intent to focus their funnel – and even use Clearbit Capture to discover key buyers and contacts at their best-fit, high-intent prospects.”
Clearbit CTO Harlow Ward
G2 Buyer Intent Signals include
Companies viewing G2 Product Profiles and Sponsored Content
Companies viewing G2 Categories, Comparison Products, and Alternative & Competitor Pages
G2 Buyer Intent Scores for every visiting company
“Buyer intent data is a secret weapon for leading B2B marketers,” said Christine Li, VP of Growth & Enablement at G2. “Clearbit’s integration with G2 helps marketers take that data even further — driving more streamlined actions for sales, intent-based revenue, and realizing the full potential of account-based marketing.”
The combined first and second-party intent datasets help identify the optimal time to reach out to customers and prospects. By integrating intent data with a firm’s ICP, marketing can determine which ideal customers are in-market.
As G2 also identifies accounts that are viewing alternatives or running product comparisons, it assists with identifying competitive threats at current customers. Risk flags allow Account Executives and Customer Success Managers to reach out proactively to wobbly renewals and reduce churn risk.
Clearbit Audience and Capture leverages first and second-party attendance.
Clearbit Audience and Capture combine first and second-party intelligence for building and activating campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google. Admins can also set up automated Slack alerts when intent scores are met, helping ensure that sales reps focus on target accounts while they are in-market.
“Our focus is on helping you put our Clearbit + G2 audiences to work across your existing stack and apps (with our flexible integrations & webhooks),” remarked Tate to GZ Consulting. “It’ll be interesting to see how these changes in the economy continue to affect how companies spend on MarTech – but we’re seeing more companies currently looking for flexible solutions to ‘upgrade the stack they already have’ vs. ‘rip-and-replace with a walled-garden suite.’”
The new 6Sense Conversational Email Campaign Builder
At the 6sense Breakthrough Conference, 6sense unveiled its new Conversational Email module. Conversational Email employs AI models, psychographics, technographics, intent data, and predictive analytics to deliver “hyper-personalized, hyper-relevant emails to qualify and convert leads to sales meetings.”
Conversational Email supports campaigns across functions and the buyers’ journey. Marketing can send “personalized peer-to-peer nurture emails from multiple AI personas, and Operations can systematize meeting conversion and scheduling for qualified accounts. Sales teams can operationalize best practices and “scale across segments much easier.”
Marketing can also deploy Conversational Email to revive dormant accounts, qualify and convert inbound leads, and boost webinar and event registrations, participation, and follow-up.
6sense claims that beta customers enjoyed a 50% reduction in deal cycle times for marketing-sourced opportunities and a 1.5X increase in average deal size.
“A look at the basic process Conversational AI uses to nurture leads and turn them into sales opportunities.”
AI tools include a Visual Conversation Flow Builder, Email Assistant, and Qualification and Sales Handover. The Email Assistant employs AI to “effortlessly engage the correct buying team members, schedule follow-up based on out-of-office replies, book meetings with the right owners, and send targeted content.”
Dynamic content consists of multivariate blocks tailored to specific keywords, segments, personas, or products for personalizing messages.
Additionally, Conversational Email supports automated workflow triggers based on account buying behavior and contact activity.
“This launch is one of our most significant product updates yet,” said 6sense CTO Viral Bajaria. “Every company has overlooked and underworked, yet high-quality, leads. Critical outreach happens too late or simply never at all, which leads to missed revenue opportunities. The early results from customers in our beta program using 6sense Conversational Email demonstrates the impact: reduction in deal cycles, increase in average deal size, and new pipeline generated. While others in the market focus on sending emails, we are the first to focus on writing relevant emails and responding in ways that lead to more quality pipeline, more efficiently.”
6sense Contextual Targeting improves engagement and recall.
6sense also rolled out Contextual Targeting, which places ads alongside similar digital content. A study by Spark Neuro found that contextually relevant ads generate 43% greater engagement and double the ad recall.
In addition, 6sense offers over 100 new custom contextual topics for B2B marketers. “Advertisers won’t need to settle to use contextual segments that are largely designed for consumer marketers,” stated 6sense.
6sense claimed three benefits to Contextual Targeting. It:
Respects user privacy by targeting audiences without using behavioral or data profiles
Provides ready-to-use contextual topics built specifically for B2B
Eliminates wasted ad spend on buyers that aren’t likely to engage
Another new feature is Campaign Forecasting which estimates a campaign’s daily audience, daily impressions, and daily spend. Campaign Forecasting helps marketers assess campaign budget and reach before launching the campaign.
6sense also announced at Breakthrough that a sales intelligence data application would be released in Q1. 6sense, which bought data company Slintel last October, will offer global contact data, intent data (3rd-party data, anonymous web visitor insights), firmographics, psychographics, and technographics. In addition, the “intuitive” UX will provide “actionable insights and [an] orchestration layer necessary to identify, prioritize and engage with accounts in-market.”
“With B2B buying committee members increasingly choosing to remain anonymous through most of their journey, sellers need insight to earlier signals for their sales outreach to be effective. With our latest advancement in 6sense Sales Intelligence, we bring industry-leading intent data, contact data, and AI insights to help sellers efficiently identify priority prospects, personalize their interactions, and take timely action with ease to drive meetings and conversion of pipeline to revenue.”
Amar Doshi, SVP of Product & UX at 6sense
The Breakthrough Conference was billed as “an inside look at best practices to leverage AI and big data to accelerate revenue generation efficiently.”
“The Proceed with Confidence focus of our 2022 Breakthrough event couldn’t be more timely. We heard from more than 50 sales and marketing speakers at this year’s event that 6sense Revenue AI is the must-have competitive edge they can’t grow without,” said 6sense CEO Jason Zintak. “B2B companies are losing revenue opportunities and leaving money on the table. To deliver a better buying experience in today’s selling environment, it’s imperative to leverage AI along with pre-intent data, intent data, and predictive analytics to know which accounts are in market to buy your product or service, when and how to target them, and what messages to deliver to best engage.”
At its earnings call last week, ZoomInfo announced a pair of acquisitions: Comparably and Dogpatch Advisors (rebranded as ZoomInfo Labs). Comparably builds out ZoomInfo’s capabilities and content in the recruitment space while Dogpatch provides ZoomInfo with professional services capabilities around data deployment and playbook development.
Comparably is a SaaS provider of employer branding, recruitment marketing, and an employee review platform. Comparably surveys and collects culture insights and compensation data directly from verified employees. It also publishes the “Best Places to Work Awards.” Comparably serves “a large portion” of the Fortune 500 and had over 20 million global visitors last year. Comparably helps syndicate awards across major business and news outlets.
“ZoomInfo’s acquisition of Comparably represents a pitch-perfect response to these changes,” blogged Senior Content Manager Sailee Sarangdhar. “Comparably, a leading employee review website and the only platform showcasing workplace culture, salary, and corporate brand reputation data, attracts more than 3 million people per month who rely on its comprehensive data about companies of all sizes. Comparably, combined with ZoomInfo’s already formidable data and software tools, gives talent leaders and companies of all sizes more powerful ways to activate their employer brand, helping to better influence prospects and convert candidates in their pipeline.”
Comparably assists with a company’s career site, Google Search placement, featured articles, media and press, social content, and video testimonials, helping amplify employee sentiment to promote the company and its culture.
“Millions of visitors come to our website to better understand company cultures, access salary data, and get employee insights. We’ve also built a popular set of software solutions to help companies enhance their employer brand and recruitment marketing,” explained Comparably CEO Jason Nazar.
Comparably recognizes that candidates prefer to work for firms with strong leadership and healthy cultures aligned with their values.
“Simply reaching out to these candidates is no longer enough — to succeed, employers need to showcase why their workplace is one that job seekers would be proud to join,” explained Sarangdhar.
The Comparably acquisition augments RecruitingOS, which the firm is rebranding as TalentOS, and positions it as “a superior talent platform that enriches the talent search experience for recruiters.” Recruiters will also benefit from enhanced talent data fed into ZoomInfo’s “Likely to Listen” score.
Employer branded content will be integrated into ZoomInfo Engage, “enabling recruiters to leverage statistics, awards, testimonials, videos, and more in their talent sourcing efforts.”
Finally, Insights from Comparably will be deployed to ZoomInfo MarketingOS for executing targeted ad campaigns for specific roles. Sarangdhar argues that “combining the power of awareness-generating ads with website visitor insights has the potential to be a game-changer for HR and recruitment teams.”
“Job seekers are more educated and discerning than ever before, and companies are going to unseen lengths to recruit candidates of all backgrounds and skillsets,” said Nazar. “Comparably has distinguished our brand as a unique data asset reflecting fair and accurate company cultures and the most popular SaaS platform for employer branding and recruitment marketing solutions. Partnering with ZoomInfo is an incredible opportunity to continue to support millions of employees and thousands of businesses and to help revolutionize how the modern challenges of recruiting are solved.”
TalentOS, which was launched in June 2021, has been deployed by over 1,000 companies. Product customer counts and ACV grew 50% quarter-over-quarter in Q1.
New user functionality includes a guided onboarding journey and a new experience for launching initial email automation campaigns. In addition, power users can leverage an advanced Boolean search capability and a redesigned AI-powered similar companies recommendation engine for recruiting.
“With Comparably, TalentOS gives companies the ability to engage and hire candidates with much more sophistication and influence,” stated CEO Henry Schuck. TalentOS plus Comparably is a must-have combination for any company recruiting in today’s competitive work environment. As an enterprise go-to-market, we know that the best-performing enterprise companies are leveraging data, insights, and software for their revenue operations, and they are significantly outperforming go-to-market teams early on in their digitization journey. Access to high-quality, relevant data provides significant competitive advantages for all sales and marketing organizations.”
The name of the game in Revenue Acceleration is Digital Engagement. There are many forms of engagement that are now being captured (emails, chat, meetings, webinars, etc.), but offline events seemed to be beyond the scope of capture; however, Chili Piper, the calendaring company, has designed tools for scheduling meetings at trade shows and from trade show floors.
The new Chili Events service offers an “all-in-one Event Meetings Management solution for generating more meetings and maximizing ROI from in-person conferences and trade shows.” In short, Chili is looking to facilitate meetings and gather engagement data from in-person events.
As in-person events return, it is vital to gather registration data as event attendees are likely to be part of the demand unit. According to Chili Piper, “81% of conference and trade show attendees have buying authority.”
“In-person events are hugely important for B2B revenue teams,” said Chili Piper CEO Nicolas Vandenberghe. “With Chili Events, we’re making it possible for marketing and sales to not just automate booking conference and trade show meetings with key prospects and customers, but to treat those meetings like any other digital touchpoint in the customer journey, with quantifiable results and data.”
Chili Event Reminders support a rescheduling link.
Chili Events features include URLs to pre-book meetings, meeting space availability, unified meeting calendars, automated reminders and rescheduling via email and SMS, and an event management dashboard. Chili Events are integrated with GSuite and Outlook365. Additionally, check-ins and no-shows are synced to Salesforce Campaigns.
Chili Events also supports meeting scheduling from trade booth floors via QR codes for mobile phones, computers at the booth, or register on the prospect’s behalf via Chili’s Instant Booker Scheduler.
Engagement intelligence supports multiple revenue acceleration features including engagement scoring, deal health signals, and deal risk alerts. It can also be used to identify and upload missing contacts in the CRM and build out the buying committee.
Once again, I’m writing about a SalesTech or B2B MarTech firm that had strong growth during the pandemic. Simply, B2B firms sped up their digitization and looked for online methods for internal and external communications. With WFH and the recognition of subscription revenues over the life of contracts, it is highly likely that 2020 strength will continue into 2021. In the case of Brainshark, they increased both their new business contracts and multi-year renewal rates. Brainshark also announced off-the-shelf learning content from a pair of training companies: ValueSelling Associates and 2Win!.
Sales Readiness vendor Brainshark posted sixty percent growth in platform usage last year with a 38% increase in new business. 71% of the new contracts were multi-year, with multi-year renewals up 40% year over year.
“Companies across the globe had to completely rewrite their playbook when the pandemic began disrupting business one year ago,” said CEO Greg Flynn. “Many realized improving their sales readiness was a way to gain a competitive advantage. They also realized Brainshark’s proven, award-winning platform was just the tool they needed. We’re especially thrilled to see our customers utilizing our coaching solution more than ever because we’ve seen first-hand the impact it can have on an organization’s bottom line.”
Citing a CSO Insights study that found that firms with dedicated sales enablement teams had a 15.3% higher win rate on forecasted deals, the firm stated, “Brainshark can be the foundation of a successful sales readiness strategy, helping organizations equip sales reps with the knowledge and skills they need, measure preparedness, and connect readiness to revenue.”
Brainshark Sales Readiness Scorecards include CRM data
Last year, the firm launched Sales Readiness Scorecards, which “provide more powerful, instant, and comprehensive visibility into whether reps and their teams are prepared to engage with clients and prospects.” Scorecard data is pulled from Salesforce, providing firms with pipeline and performance KPIs. In 2021, Brainshark plans to deepen CRM integrations for expanded metrics and coaching tools.
“The questions sales enablement professionals need to answer go beyond ‘Are our reps ready?’ The more important question is, ’Are our readiness and enablement programs working? Scorecards provide that clarity. Enablement leaders can discover which reps need help with certain parts of the sales process, and then build learning programs to address those areas for maximum impact. At the same time, sales managers have critical performance data at their fingertips that allows them to be better, more strategic coaches.”
Brainshark Chief Product Officer Greg Keshian
2Win! training “helps sales professionals master demo, presentation, client success, and storytelling skills, especially in a virtual world.”
Julie Thomas, CEO of ValueSelling Associates, said, “Our eValueSelling Fundamentals is a fast track for those who want to learn value-based selling. By blending real-world examples with interactive exercises and quizzes, users learn how to prepare for a sales call, assess the health of opportunities, and ask questions that engage prospects. This program makes for a perfect integration into Brainshark’s platform, allowing sales enablement leaders a simple and convenient way to build their training content and accelerate their results.” Brainshark lists BCI and go1 as additional training content partners.
I had four tradeshows canceled this month and next. They were opportunities for me to meet with customers and prospects (and conduct research for my industry newsletters). At this point, I’m assuming that at least two more will fall by the wayside in H1. I’m sure many of you are in a similar boat. Your marketing calendar is in a shambles, your field and inside sales reps are cloistered at home, and you are uncertain about how to manage remote workers.
Here are some ideas about how to retain momentum and deploy technology to mitigate pipeline and operational risks:
Video Meetings
If you haven’t deployed video widely across your workforce, due so ASAP. Vendors such as Zoom, WebEx, BlueJeans, Join.Me, and GoToMeeting provide reliable video conferencing solutions for multi-party meetings, demos, and document sharing. Video Meetings are a do not pass Go, donot collect $200 requirement. Every customer-facing, development, management, and planning employee should be able to join meetings from home or the office.
Setup scheduled video meetings for the next three months so they are blocked out on team calendars. This could be a 15-minute corporate call every few weeks, weekly team calls, and one-on-ones. Standing meetings should all be web-based. Office-based employees are going to feel disconnected socially, so build in some social fun at the team level (e.g. recognizing birthdays and work anniversaries, celebrating wins and releases, etc.)
I would also build training time into video meetings. It shouldn’t be all top-down. Give your staff the opportunity to cross-train peers. A sales rep could discuss her latest victory with lessons learned or provide insights into a target vertical. Marketing can review the latest product positioning and new collateral. Product Management can train on new products, review the product roadmap, and discuss the competitive landscape. The goal is to provide training, communications, coordination, and social interaction.
Record meetings and make them available to those who miss meetings with Slack or Team links. Expect that meetings will be missed due to illness, parenting requirements, and meeting conflicts.
Marketing Work-Arounds
As event marketing is off the table, marketers will need to be flexible in how they deploy their budgets. For those that planned on hosting events, they should at least proceed with their Keynote as a webinar. For H2, a roadshow in September or October can be planned, but mitigate risk in your contracting and through joint shows (shared cost and risk).
Marketers will need to deploy or expand their use of other channels including webinars, press releases, analyst outreach, blogging, social, and video. Direct mail is problematic as prospects are likely to be working from home, but e-gifting is a viable option. Look at e-gifting vendors that are supported by your Sales Engagement platform (e.g. Sendoso, PFL, Alyce)
Here is an opportunity to test additional channels and provide your event marketing team with some cross-channel development.
Canceled shows are also a reason for re-engagement campaigns. You can restart the marketing nurture process with a message around “not being able to talk to you this season.” Keep the message short and serious. You don’t know if your prospect is worried about his or her job, family members, or personal health. Also, don’t appear to be taking advantage of the situation. Be empathetic, not opportunistic.
Also, make sure to reschedule meetings from those cancelled conferences. These are likely to be phone or video calls, but reps and executives should reconfirm calls now.
Conversation Intelligence
Once you have standardized meetings, make sure they are recorded and transcribed. This is particularly true for sales meetings. Conversation Intelligence vendors such as Gong, ExecVision, and Chorus record calls, transcribe them, and perform NLP/AI processing on the conversations. Conversation Intelligence allows sales reps to be more present during calls as they no longer need to focus on note-taking.
Transcriptions and analytics have multiple benefits:
Sales Reps can quickly review calls and return to key topics and issues (e.g. pricing, next steps).
Sales Managers can review calls related to accounts and opportunities at risk to provide coaching tips to reps.
Analytics identify both the strengths and weaknesses of reps versus their peers. They also flag missed actions (e.g. discussing next steps), customer concerns, and competitors. To assist with training and opportunity scoring, Conversation Intelligence vendors identify filler word frequency, monologue length, and conversational engagement.
Reps can forward snippets to peers for questions and help. If there is a question about a bug or support issue, the snippet can be forwarded to support personnel for an update. If a sales rep feels that they handled a question or issue poorly, a snippet can be forwarded to sales management or training for advice on how to better handle the issue next time. Snippets allow peers to hear the voice of the customer.
Snippets can be stored in a library for training purposes. These would include exemplars for objection handling, competitor parrying, value discussions, etc.
Product Managers can perform bulk analysis of sales calls to identify requested features, competitor discussions, and product issues. Vendors allow for keyword customization and analytics.
Sales Cadences, also called sequences, are at the core of Sales Engagement. Cadences set up a structured set of multi-channel outbound communications supported by email templates, dialers, social, and SMS text. Cadences improve sales efficiency by eliminating follow up tasks, recording activities to CRMs, and deploying A/B tested content (emails, attachments, cadences, call scripts). While most commonly used for SDR outreach, cadences can also be used for meeting reminders, setting up quarterly account reviews, and training follow up.
SEP vendors understand that authenticity is the key to sales success. Simply blasting mindless emails at prospects is futile. Cadences can be customized by target role, industry, company size, technographics, and stage in the buyer journey. Furthermore, reps are expected to personalize emails before sending them out (SalesLoft says 20% is the optimal level). Most of the vendors now support 1-1 embedded videos from Vidyard, Hippo Video, or Videolicious.
SEP Vendors also provide a deep set of analytics. Initially, these focused on communication efficacy (e.g. open and click-through rates, best time of day to call), but now analytics assess conversations, call out deal risks, prioritize accounts, and suggest next best actions.
SEPs are now commonly deployed amongst SDRs and Inside Sales, but may still be foreign to field sales reps; however, field sales reps will be operating more like inside sales reps for the next quarter, so deploying SEPs to field sales makes sense.
Beyond outbound communications, SEP vendors are beginning to support meeting management (setting up calls), conversational intelligence, and opportunity management. SalesLoft and Outreach are the farthest along in supporting these emerging feature sets. SalesLoft acquired and integrated NoteNinja (meeting management) and Costello (opportunity management) into its platform.
SEP Vendors have taken two approaches to partnering. SalesLoft, Outreach, and Xant have partner App Directories while the other vendors integrate key vendors (e.g. Vidyard, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Zoominfo) into their offerings without a formal partner ecosystem directory.
LinkedIn
For B2B sales, there is no social platform more trusted than LinkedIn. Sales reps can leverage their networks by sharing marketing content (they should include some comments of their own) as well as writing their own content.
LinkedIn also offers an excellent Sales Intelligence product called Sales Navigator. It is available as both a desktop and mobile solution and provides additional communications channels:
InMail: An outbound email alternative, InMail allows you to message prospects for whom you lack emails and direct dial numbers.
Chat: A quick short-message way to keep in contact with members of the buying committee. It is also useful for quick reach out after establishing a LinkedIn connection with a prospect or to send a quick, congratulatory note. Chat messages are retained archivally, providing a conversational log. I have had success providing my Calendly link with initial chats, providing a mechanism for new connections to easily schedule a call (my Calendly includes my video meeting details so there is little friction).
Smart Links: Forward one or multiple attachments to a prospect via social, InMail, or email. Viewing and forwarding are tracked by LinkedIn, helping reps know which content was viewed and when. Forward tracking helps expand their understanding of the buying committee. Smart Links maintain corporate branding.
Sales Navigator provides several other high-value features:
SNAP connectors display LinkedIn content and Navigator functionality (e.g. icebreakers, mini-profiles, InMail) within Sales Engagement Platforms, CRMs, and other enterprise software.
TeamLinks allow you to leverage co-worker relationships for reaching out to prospects.
Build a List lets reps assemble Lead (contact) and Account lists within Sales Navigator. Lead and Account lists may also be synced from the CRM, allowing reps to track news and updates about key companies and contacts. While LinkedIn does not permit upload of account and contact data, they make exceptions for notes, tags, and messages entered by the rep in Sales Navigator. They also just added a thin record upload of contacts to CRM and the ability to flag execs that have left a company.
List Sharing — After building a list, users may share them with co-workers who have Sales Navigator licenses.
Sales Navigator can be a bit pricey, so running a test amongst your inside sales and field sales reps makes sense, particularly if you are concerned about H1 pipeline delays. Given the difficulty of reaching anybody by phone (made worse by prospects working at home) or email, adding additional sales communications channels is well worth testing out.
There are other LinkedIn services worth investigating or trialing. LinkedIn Marketing supports highly targeted B2B campaigns. Unlike other platforms, LinkedIn can target by company, job function, level, industry, geography, and education. LinkedIn provides campaign metrics and allows marketers to set daily budgets. Both CPM and CPC pricing are available. Pricing is based upon second-best auctions (you pay 1 cent above the second best bid price).
For larger companies, LinkedIn Elevate should also be considered, particularly with remote workers. Elevate provides a curated feed of content to company employees for social media distribution (e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook). Elevate amplifies corporate messaging and reduces the level of effort for sales reps and other employees to share content through social networks.
LinkedIn Learning is offering sixteen courses at no charge covering topics related to working from home, remote management, tools, and mindset.
“In the coming days, we will make 16 LinkedIn Learning courses available for free including tips on how to: stay productive, build relationships when you’re not face-to-face, use virtual meeting tools (Microsoft Teams, Skype, BlueJeans, Cisco Webex and Zoom), and balance family and work dynamics in a healthy way.”
Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn SVP of Product
Sales Intelligence
Sales Intelligence services help sales reps build prospecting lists, quality leads, refine account messaging, expand into new departments and locations, track accounts, and target additional buying committee members.
Many sales intelligence services also offer B2B DaaS services for updating CRMs and MAPs. Salesforce data hygiene is maintained through Lightning Data connectors, a sub-category on the AppExchange. Because data is synced with CRMs and MAPs, it is continuously updated, ensuring that firmographic data is accurate and that departed contacts are removed from sales and marketing activity (BTW — contacts decay at 30% per annum, so maintaining your enterprise software contact data is a valuable investment)
Sales Intelligence vendors also provide full workflow integrations into CRMs which allow reps to build lists; view and update accounts, contacts, and leads; and perform account qualification and account planning within CRM I-frames.
Sales Intelligence vendors include
Zoominfo: Deep contacts, emails, org charts, and technographic content. They are the leader in technology sales intelligence and recently added visitor intelligence, trigger-based workflows, and webforms. Zoominfo (FKA DiscoverOrg) also supports Ideal Customer Profiling (ICP), email verification, and B2B DaaS.
D&B Hoovers: The deepest set of global company intelligence for strategic sales reps. Includes full family trees, public company financials and filings, analyst reports, industry market research, SWOTs, European private company financials, and sales triggers. Dun & Bradstreet also supports ICP, B2B DaaS, Visitor Intelligence, Programmatic Marketing, and Customer Data Platforms.
InsideView: A global database with greater depth in North America and Europe, InsideView offers strong sales triggers and integrated social media viewing. InsideView also supports B2B DaaS and ICP.
Sales Genie: The best solution for reps that sell to both companies and individuals (e.g. insurance agencies, mobile, office supplies, landscaping). Features include light sales force automation for firms that have yet to implement a CRM, new businesses, new homeowners, email templates, integrated dialer, and marketing services (SEO, site design, direct mail).
RelPro: A specialist vendor targeting financial services companies.
Artesian Solutions: A UK-based social selling vendor with deep sales triggers and mobile-based meeting prep. They also offer a US solution.
Cognism: A UK-based sales intelligence vendor with sales engagement functionality, B2B DaaS services, and ICP tools.
Vainu: A Nordic-based sales intelligence vendor that also covers the Netherlands (France, US, and the UK are in beta). They also support B2B DaaS and trigger-based workflows.
Ongoing Investment
Research has shown that firms that continue to invest during recessions come out of the downturns much better prepared to grow market share and revenue than those that stop investing. Marketing is an investment in your pipeline and brand. B2B Data-as-a-Service is an investment in your data quality and ability to target prospects effectively. It also reduces sales and marketing waste in efforts directed at weak prospects and departed contacts. SalesTech and MarTech purchases are investments in your revenue generation capabilities.
This is also an opportunity for your sales and marketing teams to cross-train, develop new skills, and test out new tools and processes.
When we come out of the backside of what, hopefully, is a short-term recession, you want to be better prepared to meet latent demand for your products and services. While cutting back on investment and cash burn may be necessary for survival at some companies, don’t cut back on your ability to serve the market in 2021 unless you have to do so. Let others sacrifice the future of their revenue generation operations out of short-term concerns. Bank your savings in travel expenses and event marketing, but don’t cut back in other areas unless necessary.
Terra Incognita
We are entering a terra incognita for the next three to six months, so steady, empathetic leadership should be your objective. On 9/11, our CEO pulled us into the room and talked to us. I don’t remember his words, but I remember that he was calm and understood that we were all upset and anxious. Business was the least of his concerns that day. He wanted to show a steady hand at the tiller and sent us home to be with family.
Our raison d’être is not to work, and sometimes we are jolted back into that reality. Family, friends, and health are a higher priority. COVID 19 is not the new normal, but simply a bad storm that will pass.
B2B DaaS vendor RingLead rolled out its DataExchange. The new data enrichment platform brings together datasets from many of the leading B2B vendors with detailed profiles in a searchable catalog. RingLead is not selling the data, but passing it through via contracts written on partner paper. Data is processed through RingLead’s data quality platform. Along with providing a centralized enrichment hub, RingLead normalizes, segments, dupe checks, enriches, validates, performs lead-to-account linking, and automates routing.
The company stated that the typical user would need to manage eight or nine different vendors to automate Data Exchange processes and data sets. According to RingLead, ninety percent of their current customers are already licensing DataExchange data sets.
“The introduction of The DataExchange reinforces RingLead’s data-first approach to business and unwavering commitment to empowering businesses, not only with the leading data quality platform but now, the ability to painlessly find, connect, and structure the data they need to scale. Through transparency, community, and education around data, RingLead continues to strive to be the most trusted data quality platform for every business.”
RingLead Press Release
The
DataExchange allows customers to mix and match company and contact intelligence
from leading vendors:
Company / Contact Data: Zoominfo, Crunchbase, Clearbit, KickFire, DatabaseUSA, People Data Labs, Oceanos, InsideView
Person: Oceanos, Zoominfo, Pipl, Spokeo, StatSocial, People Data Labs
B2C Demographic: Spokeo
“Each
of these new data vendors provides tremendous value not only to the customer
but to the entire DataExchange community,” said RingLead Chief Product
Officer John Kosturos. “By continuing to focus on select, best-of-breed
data vendors, we ensure The DataExchange remains a competitive marketplace
where buyers can remain confident in the vendors they’re assessing.”
While
company and contact data from leading B2B vendors are likely to be the primary
focus of early adopters, the platform supports additional content sets
including funding data, technographics, news alerts, and intent enrichment.
Validation services are also critical as they reduce email bounce rates
(Zero Bounce, TowerData, and Oceanos), invalid phone dials (TowerData), and
non-deliverable direct mail (TowerData).
“Our vision is a world in which recipients value sales and marketing outreach. Using the highest-quality, consent-based intent data is only the first step,” said Bombora SVP of Data Sales Mike Burton. “B2B brands also need data portability, so that intent data informs all of their sales and marketing efforts. Being part of the RingLead DataExchange brings this vision one step closer to reality.”
Vendor
profiles include a company overview, description of capabilities and offerings,
an attribute catalog, integration documentation, resources, and crowd-sourced
reviews.
“We’re flipping
the historically painful process of buying and connecting data on its head,”
said Kosturos. “Paired with RingLead’s data quality platform, users of
The DataExchange can now take the data they need, ingest it into a batch
process, a real-time import, web submission, or a manually created record.”
“As the appetite for data continues to grow, it’s necessary for businesses to have flexibility and transparency in how they buy data, and whom they buy it from,” said Zoominfo Senior Director of Partner Marketing Krystan Resch. “The DataExchange transforms the data buying experience for the consumer while simultaneously empowering ZoomInfo Powered by DiscoverOrg to deliver more relevant, personalized buying experiences through the most accurate and actionable global B2B database.”
