Technology Marketing Intelligence vendor HG Insights released Functional Area Intelligence, a set of advanced insights that specify the department and location where specific technologies have been deployed. The new offering provides deeper intelligence for sales and marketing teams.
“Functional Area Intelligence is a first-in-the-market [capability], deriving insights about a company’s organization linked to its technology profile,” said CTO Rob Fox. “By providing actionable data at the departmental level, we’re enabling companies to better understand technology adoption across teams and locations. This increases the ability to better optimize territories, hypertarget marketing campaigns, and build better account plans across sales. We’re committed to improving insights for sellers and marketers so they can close more deals, and this is a step in that direction.”
HG Insights employs advanced NLP for analyzing structured and semi-structured documents to determine where technology has been deployed at global organizations. Functional Area Intelligence is available through the HG Universe data subscription as a monthly or quarterly feed. Functional Area Intelligence includes
The department tied to a particular technology and specific location
Summary and detailed location views
Department size predictions down to the location
Trend analysis to show department adoption changes over time
Decisionmakers associated with the documents from which the technology signals have been mined.
“Armed with this knowledge, Go-To-Market teams can develop targeted competitive campaigns connecting the organization, key location, and technology information, enhancing program effectiveness to drive revenue,” stated HG Insights.
HG Insights organizational and technology insights.
Revenue Operations vendor Clari announced Account Engagement, a set of AI insights focused on account relationships and activity “to help leaders strategically identify risk and opportunity and deploy resources against the accounts that matter most.”
Account Engagement takes real-time CRM, email, calendar, and partner engagement data to display a full view of touchpoints across each account. “Revenue leaders can understand how reps are engaging with accounts, what accounts are at risk, and what the whitespace potential is,” helping managers allocate resources, reduce churn, and expand new account penetration.
With Account Engagement, revenue leaders can analyze how their remote sales teams are performing via Account Heatmaps, Engagement KPIs, Territory Coverage, and Account Whitespace.
Engagement KPIs let managers assess meeting, email, and other engagement metrics across accounts. Account Managers and Customer Success Management touches are also tracked, helping ensure that all accounts are receiving proper attention. Managers can quickly filter the accounts to review only non-engaged accounts or drill down on any account to reveal next steps, notes, account priority, and opportunity size.
Being able to view accounts in aggregate and then drill into the details of individual accounts supports engagement-informed account review and strategy sessions.
Managers can also step back and view activity across a team with individual rep summaries over an extended time period. Managers can click on any rep’s name to view their engagement data graphed over the period. This view is particularly valuable for recently onboarded reps or reps that are on performance plans.
“The revenue process does not end with sales and marketing. Account managers and customer success teams also need to track customer and activity engagement data and insights. Without this knowledge, you can’t effectively manage your account relationships.
Visibility into account engagement ensures your team is focusing on key customer relationships to proactively mitigate churn risk. With this information, you can guarantee your account managers and customer success team are engaging with the right stakeholders and avoiding last-minute fire drills before renewals.”
Stephane Glass, Director of Product Marketing at Clari.
Territory Coverage analytics help track rep engagement across their accounts.
The Account Whitespace report identifies accounts that are lacking attention.
“Our mission is to give teams more control over their revenue from the point of initial engagement to closed business and expansion, especially at times when teams are switching to remote selling,” said Andy Byrne CEO of Clari. “With this launch we’re providing complete visibility into customer engagement to drive higher effectiveness of GTM strategies across all stages of the revenue process.”
Account Engagement gathers engagement data from Dialpad, Drift, Highspot, Marketo, Outreach, and RingCentral. “The ability to quickly track the success of GTM strategies is critical for any revenue organization and especially in the current market environment,” said Craig Rosenberg, chief analyst and co-founder of TOPO Research. “Visibility into engagement of target accounts and where teams are spending their time provides insights into how strategy changes are performing. Revenue teams need this insight not in 6 or 12 months but in real-time, so they can see what’s working and make the necessary adjustments to stay on track to achieve their goals.”
If you sell into the technology space, then you need to plan for acquisitions and their impact on your revenue stream. M&A is both a threat and an opportunity. It is a Yin / Yang situation for sales reps.
There are several ways in which acquisitions can result in a customer drop or lost revenue:
If your customer is “acqhired” by a company in another industry, then their talent is often re-purposed, and they may no longer require your product or services.
The acquirer may be a customer of a competitor and not looking to change vendors. The acquirer may be tied into a long-term contract or they may be satisfied with their current solution.
Both companies are customers, but volume pricing results in revenue decline at renewal. This can be made worse if the firm is looking to obtain efficiencies through layoffs or process efficiencies.
Your key contacts are let go or assigned to other duties.
The acquiring company has lengthy and expensive procurement processes that delay renewals or cause a drop as your POC is unwilling to navigate the new purchasing system.
But it also presents opportunities to cross-sell into new divisions and creates a greater openness to new ideas and solutions. Likewise, the new parent may be a good fit for other products and services from your firm.
Thus, it is important to be present during these windows of opportunity and risk. Here are a few recommendations:
Reach out to your advocates and congratulate them on the transaction. Keep the note short and indicate you’ll reach out to them again in a few weeks once the dust has settled. Employees, particularly at acquired firms, are nervous and often initially in the dark about what it means to them and their department, so give them a little space to breathe while acknowledging their new reality. Then make sure to follow up a few weeks later as promised.
If your current advocates and influencers aren’t LinkedIn connections, then send out the connection requests. This is the easiest way to see if their titles or roles change.
Track any departures to new companies. They are likely to be your future advocates or deal influencers so keep the conversation going even if they don’t represent any near-term opportunities.
If key individuals depart, then move quickly to reestablish connections with their replacements or former departmental colleagues. Don’t leave gaps with the buying committee.
Ask for referrals into the new organization.
Be flexible in your contracts. Being intransigent and holding firms to current contracts when they wish to renegotiate ensures current revenue but increases the likelihood that you will be dropped in the future. Consider the impact on their LTV by being intransigent.
Honestly evaluate the impact on your pipeline and discuss it with your management. Opportunities may be pushed out and renewals put at risk. Update your account plan and work with your sales director to manage deal and broader account risk.
Remember that no customer is permanent. You need to both deepen and widen your relationships. The broader your set of relationships, the more stable your LTV and the greater your likelihood of withstanding acquisitions, changes in top leadership, and departures of your cheerleaders. The best way to prepare for an acquisition is to have established a broad set of relationships across your key accounts. Relying on one or two champions leaves you vulnerable.
