Tag: Vertical IQ

Groove – Vertical IQ Partnership

Google Omnibar with Vertical IQ profile link

Sales Engagement Platform Groove now offers joint customers Vertical IQ industry and economic intelligence from the Groove Omnibar.

Vertical IQ helps “banking and credit union relationship managers, advisors, and consultants build trust and strengthen sales conversations through insightful and timely industry intelligence.”

Vertical IQ publishes 530 plain English industry overviews and 3,400 local economic analyses. The research is utilized by relationship managers in the financial services sector and strategic sales reps looking to better understand the needs and concerns of customers and prospects. Vertical IQ profiles also assist marketers in better understanding pains at various C-level functions within an industry, offer a set of industry-specific questions for sales reps and relationship managers, and help customer success teams understand the pains and concerns of their customers.

“It’s not uncommon for reps to speak to a hundred people a day across multiple verticals, and our integration with Vertical IQ gives them the industry intelligence they need to have impactful conversations every single time,” said Groove CEO Chris Rothstein. “With Groove and Vertical IQ, reps can now get access to industry knowledge in a single click from wherever they work.”

Industry intelligence is available to joint customers at no additional charge with single sign-on functionality.

The firms are initially targeting financial services and banking organizations, a core market for Vertical IQ. According to Groove Director of Communications Jason Klein, displaying Vertical IQ profiles to relationship managers is a “powerful use case.” RMs often lack industry-specific expertise but need to understand the basics of many industries, including pain points, trends, financial ratios, and CxO concerns.

However, the firms see a broader set of beneficiaries (e.g., relationship managers, sales professionals, customer success professionals), regardless of their industry. The Vertical IQ sweet spot is professionals that sell into, support, or analyze a broad set of industries. Vertical IQ provides “the insights users need to better understand a specific industry before, during, and after meetings,” continued Klein. “As we continue to enhance the integration, we believe some of the key content will be challenges, trends, financial benchmark data, and the content related to call preparation.”

“Groove’s flexibility and ease-of-use make it an effective sales engagement platform for relationship sellers, which is why we’re seeing such strong demand for this integration from our joint customer base,” said Vertical IQ CEO Bobby Martin. “This integration is just the beginning of our vision for empowering the modern sales professional.”

While Sales Intelligence platforms have long offered market research and industry overviews to their customers, the Groove – Vertical IQ partnership is the first integration of industry overviews into a Sales Engagement platform.

The joint service is generally available.

Vertical IQ – RMA eMentor

Vertical IQ industry intelligence is now available via the Risk Management Association’s (RMA) eMentor program, a “self-service, subscription-based knowledge hub” for credit professionals.  The combined tool marries RMA’s Annual Statement studies with Vertical IQ’s plain English industry overviews, helping credit team members prepare for calls, assess credit risk, and improve their credit knowledge.  Other tools include Best Practices, eCases, interactive worksheets, and trackable exams.

RMA has long collected US private company industry norms to assist with credit and lending decisioning.  RMA multi-year financial ratios are available by NAICS code and stratified by assets and revenue.  

Vertical IQ industry overviews help bankers prepare for meetings, understand industry trends and issues, and assess potential loan risks.  Vertical IQ provides 250 reports covering over 1,000 industries.  Vertical IQ research is directly viewable within eMentor and downloadable as PDFs.

“With the addition of Vertical IQ’s industry knowledge to eMentor, RMA makes a great platform even more indispensable for the bankers who rely on eMentor to better understand the risks and opportunities financial institutions and their borrowers face,” said RMA CEO Nancy Foster.  “eMentor powered by Vertical IQ arms bankers with the market intelligence that is crucial throughout the life of the loan—from initial meetings with borrowers, to putting together a financing package that is right for them, to monitoring loan performance.”

Vertical IQ Credit Underwriting Solution

Industry Profiler Vertical IQ released a credit underwriting solution to assist lenders’ credit decisioning.  Vertical IQ has long served financial institutions with a set of plain-English industry overviews for relationship managers.  The new service expands its Industry Risks tab and renames it “Credit Underwriting and Risks.”  A new industry brief is also available.

The new Credit Underwriting and Risks content includes a proprietary Industry Risk Rating based on account financial risk, exit rates, industry performance during downturns, barriers to entry, and the industry outlook.  Other new content includes key industry and economic performance metrics, a Financial Comparison Toolkit that performs custom benchmarking against key financial metrics, and industry-specific credit decisioning considerations.  The Financial Comparison metrics are downloadable for sharing with clients and prospects.

“In today’s volatile market, loan credit underwriters are understandably cautious about their lending decisions.  The Credit Underwriting and Risks Chapter and Industry Brief are quick ways for bankers and credit professionals to get up to speed on the lending environment for a client’s or prospect’s particular industry.”

Vertical IQ CEO Bobby Martin

The new industry brief contains an industry summary, industry risk rating, key performance metrics, financial ratios, important credit underwriting-related considerations, common industry-related risks, and the Financial Comparison Toolkit.

The new Credit Underwriting content is delivered through the desktop application with an API upgrade before the end of the month.  The original content will be extended to additional apps and partners in the coming months.

“Great decisions are made by taking something that is complicated and simplifying it to its primary moving parts. When a banker can do that, he or she offers a more clear understanding and a more fluid and productive conversation. Vertical IQ has simplified the process of analyzing industry risks for the commercial banking world. It is long overdue.”

David Nicholson, Founder of Credit Training, Inc.

Industry-specific financing topics that were already available in the service include discussions of working capital, capital financing, business valuation, and financial benchmarks.

The new content is available within the core service at no additional charge.  However, by extending the value for credit underwriting at banking and commercial finance, Vertical IQ will be improving its seat penetration within those segments.

Vertical IQ has had a busy summer. Along with the credit underwriting solution, they announced integrations with RelPro for banking and Seismic for Sales Enablement.

RelPro – Introhive Partnership

Sales Intelligence vendors RelPro and Introhive announced a partnership to deliver extended relationship insights and workflow integrations to joint customers in the Professional and Financial Services sectors.  The combined solution is immediately available to joint customers.

RelPro integrates content from seventeen data sources to deliver sales insights and contacts across 7 million companies.  Introhive adds relationship insights, data automation, and data cleansing tools.  The partnership helps “clients achieve greater sales efficiency and productivity” during the pandemic and recession.

“Our clients use RelPro to identify new prospects and ensure the contact information they have for those prospects is accurate and reliable.  Being able to map relationships that may already exist within their organization boosts the productivity of their business development professionals and increases referral traffic and collaboration.  With Introhive’s advanced relationship intelligence automation technology and data automation capabilities combined with our rich data coverage and quality, our clients can marry two best-in-class solutions to support and enrich their business development activities with little to no disruption of their day-to-day.”

RelPro CEO Martin Wise

Introhive boosts CRM adoption through automated contact data enrichment and uploads.  Introhive claims that it uncovers 350 additional contacts per user.  “The AI engine then maps these contacts to identify relationships across prospects and customer accounts.”  By reducing research and data maintenance overhead, sales and business professionals can focus their activities on prospects and clients, therefore driving customer satisfaction and the bottom line.

“With Introhive, users gain back roughly an average of 12 hours per week that would otherwise be spent on data entry or preparing for meetings.  Our Pre-Meeting Digest removes the burden of gathering information to ensure prospect or customer-facing professionals are equipped with everything they need before meetings, while Post-Meeting Reports allow for notes, tasks, and activities to be added to CRM directly from the user’s email inbox.  When we add RelPro’s database with our relationship mapping and productivity tools, customers can begin uncovering contacts and opportunities that were previously hidden.”

Introhive CEO Jody Glidden

Several months ago, RelPro released an integration with Vertical IQ to deliver industry intelligence to joint customers.  This partnership is bearing fruit as the companies have been providing referrals to each other in the financial services space.  Of course, integration partnerships also improve the stickiness of both solutions.

RelPro’s revenue is up a bit during the first half of 2020, and Wise is confident about H2.  Their business slowed less due to the pandemic than due to banks focusing on PPP processing for about eight weeks.  The banking business has since recovered as they look to provide “on the couch business development” to relationship managers and business development professionals across all segments of the banking industry.

Showing agility, the firm loaded the SBA PPP loan data into their platform and made it screenable.  Bankers and advisors can search the 660k companies who received loans in excess of $150,000.  The new dataset provides additional banking relationship data that complements UCC (liens) loan data already available through their service.

Introhive has over 240 employees with offices in the US, Canada, the UK, and India.  The firm supports over 100,000 global users.  Introhive was founded in 2012 with an initial focus on the accounting market.  It has taken an industry-by-industry approach and now supports global systems integrators, law firms, finance, commercial real estate, and, most recently, technology firms.

Introhive placed tenth on Deloitte’s Fast 50 with revenue growth of 1,700 percent over four years.

Seismic – Vertical IQ Partnership

Seismic announced a partnership with Vertical IQ to deliver industry-specific insights within its Sales Enablement Platform.  Vertical IQ industry overviews will be delivered through Seismic’s dynamic content automation tool, LiveDocs, allowing bankers to quickly assemble client-facing content tailored to the client.  Vertical IQ covers over 325 industries with coverage of industry risks, quarterly insights, key financial benchmarks, and industry growth data.  Coverage of niche industries and regional economic data are also available from within Seismic but are not part of the LiveDocs integration.

Insights can be presented in-person, in print, or via digital devices and are packaged into Seismic templates.

The integration “helps bankers develop hyper-personalized communications with clients and prospects,” stated Vertical IQ CMO David Buffaloe.  “Our industry content is available directly through their platform, allowing bankers to develop customized presentation slides based on the prospects specific industry.”

Vertical IQ content is available to customers outside of the banking space, but the initial implementation was developed with Fulton Bank.  “We started with the joint focus on banking/financial services organizations; however, anyone that uses Seismic and sells to multiple industries would see value,” said Buffaloe.

Buffaloe called the integration a “big win for users” as bank leaders are looking to reduce the number of logins for conducting account research and support.

A Gartner survey found that bankers that deliver insights to their customers generate 94% higher fees.

Relationship Managers (RMs) at banks and credit unions support a broad set of customers and industries, making it difficult to develop deep expertise in individual industries.  Deploying on-demand, industry-specific intelligence helps RMs quickly come up to speed on an industry, ask intelligent questions of owners and financial professionals, and assemble custom presentations for winning business.  Industry-specific content also assists customers in their decision making and supports more valuable meetings between RMs and customers.

“Conversations between a banker and client should go both ways.  Vertical IQ and Seismic’s solution ensures conversations are backed by real-time, tailored insights so bankers can engage in better discussions and act as a trusted advisor.  This helps them bring unique value and expertise to the table to win, grow and retain more business.”

Vertical IQ CEO Bobby Martin

A recent JD Power survey of small businesses found that most were dissatisfied with their bankers’ ability to meet their needs and expectations.  Only 37% of small business customers felt that banks appreciated their business, and only 32% felt that banks understood their business.

According to Bob Neuhaus, VP of Financial Services at JD Power, “Banks need to focus on better integrating high-touch resources with innovative digital tools to meet the demands of small business.”

“Business customers have come to expect hyper-personalized interactions that meet the standards that are now common-place in their personal lives,” said Bill Finnegan, Managing Director, Financial Services Marketing at Seismic.  “We’re thrilled about our partnership with Vertical IQ because of the competitive advantage it will offer our banking customers.  The ability to generate rich industry insights on-the-fly in a marketing-approved format will help bankers elevate client conversations from just product, to industry-specific trends, advice, and guidance.  It allows bankers to be a consultative partner that demonstrates their bank truly understands their business.”

Vertical IQ has launched several integrations over the past year to deliver its industry research within sales and banking workflows.  Recent partnerships include Salesforce, RelPro, and Seismic.  Vertical IQ profiles are written in plain English for non-experts in financial services industries.  Strategic sales reps also leverage Vertical IQ.

The Vertical IQ integration is being sold by Seismic as an add-on to their current sales enablement solution.

Vertical IQ – RelPro Partnership for Industry Intelligence

Vertical IQ Call Prep Questions in RelPro

RelPro and Vertical IQ partnered to deliver company and industry intelligence in each other’s products.  Both companies serve financial services firms and the Relationship Management (RM) function at banks, with many customers requesting an integrated solution.  Joint customers have access to both programs via bi-directional authorization and accreditation at the user level.

“This is a partnership both companies’ customers have been clamoring for. So we listened to what the market was telling us and worked to bring the concept to fruition.  It was a natural fit.”

RelPro CEO Martin Wise

Vertical IQ provides a set of over 500 plain-English industry overviews designed for financial services firms that are broadly applicable to RMs, business development, and sales reps, particularly professionals that support many industries.  The profiles provide a high-level understanding of industries, including industry norms, structure, trends, pain points, call prep questions, forecasts, and news.

RelPro is a traditional sales intelligence service with company and executive content sourced from sixteen partners.  Data partners include Zoominfo, Dun & Bradstreet, BoardEx, GuideStar, Crunchbase, and HG Insights.  Rel Pro users build prospecting lists, perform account planning, identify additional contacts at key accounts, and, with the Vertical IQ partnership, research industries based upon each company’s industry codes.  A new Industry tab displays Vertical IQ’s Industry Overview, Trends & Industry News, Competition, and Call Preparation content.  

Instead of providing the full Vertical IQ report, RelPro chose to publish the most valuable sections from Vertical IQ and combine them with industry-specific intelligence from its database, including Competitors and Top Companies.  Should a user wish to dive deeper into an industry, the RM simply clicks a button and is taken to the full industry profile in Vertical IQ.

The Vertical IQ integration is a bit simpler.  Users can click on a “find companies in RelPro” button located in the industry dashboard.  The user is taken seamlessly to RelPro to perform a peer search.  The industry codes are pre-populated, and the user can include additional sizing and geographic variables for defining a territory.  Users may also plot company lists on a map, a useful tool for field sales rep planning.

Users do not need to log into both offerings.  A handshake between the firms ensures that jointly registered users receive access to both platforms.

There is a clear logic to this partnership.  RelPro and Vertical IQ allow Relationship Managers to rapidly context switch, perform client due diligence, ask intelligent questions, and conduct business development.  The combined services deliver customer and industry insights within the RM’s workflow, helping them better serve customers and their banking objectives.

The partners initially focused on their set of joint customers with contracts written on separate paper.  There is no surcharge for the cross-product authorization and functionality.

RelPro offers four industry subjects to the combined RelPro / Vertical IQ industry tab.

Vertical IQ has also stepped up during the pandemic to assist business decision making. Their editors are publishing a set of free coronavirus related profiles at the industry-level, allowing RMs, sales reps, and risk decision makers (supply, credit) to properly evaluate industry-specific risks.

“Rather than learning about industries in bits and pieces or from unreliable sources, we knew it was important for people to get information from an experienced industry intelligence partner written for those that advise small  and medium-sized businesses. That was the impetus for delivering this intelligence and making it free of charge.”

Bill Walker, Vertical IQ EVP of Research

A freemium approach during the current health and economic crisis makes a great deal of sense. It provides free resources to small businesses and distressed sectors that can assist with decision making, while providing a free taste of their content to professional and financial services firms. The content set should result in both future sales and brand equity.

Working at Home — Ideas from Tech Companies

Over the past few days, I’ve suggested ideas for maintaining pipeline and maintaining a positive and constructive outlook. This is now looking like it will last through the spring and potentially into the summer, so let’s be open to new ideas, practices, and routines.

I collected some ideas from those in the tech industry that I follow.

SalesLoft

In this morning’s team meeting the EMEA SalesLoft team discussed how we can keep the culture and mental wellbeing at the forefront while we work remotely…

We are having a daily stand up for 15 minutes, virtual team lunch on a Wednesday and virtual Friday drinks. We are making sure we put time aside for exercise and doing the things we love. We are being mindful of continuing to share ‘glass half full’ stories. We are also looking into what we can do to help with the bigger issue that people are facing in regards to the Corona Virus – local charities, food banks, the elderly.

Ollie Sharpe, SalesLoft VP of Revenue, EMEA

TOPO

A TOPO study of 350+ marketers indicated that only 16% of firms see a significant impact to their pipeline, 64% see a moderate impact due to coronavirus.  The biggest impacts are due to canceled events (87%), corporate travel bans (64%), buyers working from home (53%), and prohibitions against face-to-face meetings.  Only 27% cited buyers not booking meetings and frozen buyer budgets (22%).

TOPO survey (N=350)

ClickZ

Research conducted in 2018 by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research  indicated that B2B marketers who participate in industry events allocated nearly 40 percent of their budgets to exhibitions and industry shows, almost five times more than the 8% spent on online marketing.

Even if only a small fraction of the events’ budgets is shifted to online marketing, it would translate into a massive growth in web marketing.

The major advantage of digital marketing, besides the fact that it does not require face-to-face interaction, is that it is measurable. Marketers can quite easily obtain a good picture of their spending return on investment (ROI), and of which activities generate the highest number of quality leads and at what expense.

Assuming that many marketers will have some extra free time, especially those who will have to go into home isolation, they are advised to use it to review their online marketing strategy and redefine their marketing messages.

Dan Gerstenfield, Interteam Content Services

David Brock

It’s time to pick up the phone. No texts, no emails, no social platforms. Pick up the phone and talk to someone. You are probably dealing with some of the same issues that come with physical separation.

It’s not the time to pitch people, it’s the time to show that you care–about them. It doesn’t have to be a long conversation, but ask them how they are doing, ask how they are keeping engaged and productive, share some ideas.

All of us share in this experience. Each of us is figuring things out. We can learn from each other, at the same time feel more connected.

David Brock, Author of “Sales Manager Survival Guide”

Sirius Decisions (Forrester)

  • Create a task force. Except in very large companies or those with specific types of risks, most companies do not have a dedicated crisis response team, and many have never created even a bare-bones crisis communications plan. Now is the time to do so. Bring together functional leaders from across your organization to begin identifying and prioritizing issues, with all major functions and regions represented. The senior communications leader is usually at the helm, and in some smaller organizations, the effort may be led by the CEO. Other participants will likely include human resources, legal counsel, operations/facilities, sales and customer service leaders, and various marketing/communications disciplines that are either directly affected or will be involved in delivering information to audiences. Each individual should have a clear understanding of his or her specific responsibilities.
  • Prioritize issues of greatest urgency. Ensuring the safety of employees, customers and other stakeholders is obviously the priority, and external guidance from public health experts will be important to understand what these issues are…
  • Develop a protocol for emergent situations. Obviously the plan should lay out a set of actions the organization will take immediately, based on what is known today. However, the situation is fluid and it’s not possible to know with certainty what the situation will look like in a month or six months. That’s why it’s important to have a protocol for addressing new situations as they emerge… 
  • Prepare the communications engine. Providing transparent and ongoing communication is the hallmark of good crisis communications. The communications team needs to analyze the types of communication that will be needed to support a variety of scenarios. One of the most challenging aspects of crisis management is the need to create a wide range of critical content, have it vetted by legal and pushed out through channels as quickly as possible. Create templates for common types of content and stub content that can be built-out as needed. Set up an expedited legal vetting process and work with digital teams to identify how content will be conveyed through the company’s owned channels (web site, social, communities). Also prepare spokespeople – from the CEO to the receptionist, with concise answers that can be given without additional approvals or escalation paths.
  • Map communications strategies to audiences. SiriusDecisions always recommends starting with an understanding of the audience, and crisis response is no different…
  • Maintain open communications with employees. A large percentage of the workforce will face some kind of disruption to their normal routines or even their income…One of the first priorities should be to plan for how communications will flow internally: the channels and cadence that employees can expect, as well as where to go if the normal channels (which may occur in a face-to-face environment) are not available. Also remember that employees are a channel, and if you enable them with content, they can extend the reach of your information and credibility with audiences. [Full Text]

Resources

Vertical IQ: Freemium Industry Profiles

The new Vertical IQ freemium service provides the first three chapters of Vertical IQ industry profiles at no charge.
The new Vertical IQ freemium service provides the first three chapters of Vertical IQ industry profiles at no charge.

Vertical IQ launched a freemium market research service that provides “foundational information” for over 280 industries.  Vertical IQ writes plain English industry overviews for bank managers, consultants, and accountants.  However, the research has broad value to other functions such as strategic sales, market planning, and procurement.

Previously, professionally sourced industry research was only accessible by purchasing individual reports or subscription licenses, but the business model is evolving.  To fill a market need, Vertical IQ is now offering much of its valuable industry insights for free.  This innovative approach delivers market research on a freemium, just-in-time basis – a first in the marketplace.

“Vertical IQ Freemium was created to fill the void for an easily-accessible, user-friendly industry research product.  This new free version of our popular research platform puts valuable industry insights at the tips of your fingers in a matter of seconds.”

Vertical IQ co-founder, Bobby Martin

The free content covers the first three sections of the Vertical IQ reports: Overview, Industry Structure & Forecast, and Industry Trends.  Full reports are available on a pay per view basis ($99) or via a subscription ($1,099). The Full report spans an additional nine chapters:

  1. How Firms Operate
  2. Risks to Watch Out for
  3. Quarterly Insights
  4. Working Capital
  5. Call Prep Questions
  6. Financial Statistics
  7. Business Valuation
  8. Web Links
  9. Terms

The Full report is downloadable as a PDF file and includes access to report updates over the next year.

The annual subscription covers 400 industries and 325 local US economies.  Updates and industry news alerts are emailed quarterly.  The subscription service also supports mobile access, a Sales Kit which “Integrates industry insight into your contact strategy by sharing deliverables with business owners,” and an industry ranking tool.

Vertical IQ competes against D&B First Research and IBISWorld.  All three provide plain English market research for financial services firms and sales professionals. Vertical IQ has over 35,000 users.  Research is updated monthly.

The Vertical IQ Industry Forecast and Structure report displays historical and projected growth rates, the characteristics of an average firm within the industry, and industry structure (e.g. concentration, female and minority ownership rates) and the top firms.
The Vertical IQ Industry Forecast and Structure chapter displays historical and projected growth rates, the characteristics of an average firm within the industry, and industry structure (e.g. concentration, female and minority ownership rates) and the top firms.

ABM Research Vendors

When conducting account based (ABM) research, it is necessary to develop a broad view of your customers and prospects which includes company, contact, and industry research.   Unfortunately, open web research is quite time-consuming and your sales reps are unlikely to consistently engage in general research, so consider Sales Intelligence vendors with editorial research teams. 

Executive research should go beyond the Leadership page and LinkedIn profiles.  One option is Boardroom Insiders which gathers rich executive profiles on CxOs written by business journalists.

For industry research, look at Vertical IQ, IBISWorld, or First Research.  Vertical IQ and First Research are strong offerings for sales teams that sell broadly across many segments but are not verticalized.  They are written in plain English and include Q&A sections. The content in IBISWorld is more formal but better suited for verticalized teams.

At the company level, consider Dun & Bradstreet Hoovers, InsideView, or DiscoverOrg.  All three provide company and contact profiles, list building, and sales triggers.  D&B Hoovers goes deeper on global coverage, family trees, and industry profiles, DiscoverOrg offers the deepest set of technographics and rich bios, and InsideView provides excellent sales triggers and social media intelligence.

Quora: How do I find a company’s top competitors?

The following is a post I wrote on Quora.

There are a couple of ways.

  • 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.