In any business, improving sales usually means acquiring and utilizing deep insights into activities, processes, strategies, and overall performance. When you don’t have the right tools and solutions for this, it is nigh on impossible to identify what is working and what is not. This makes addressing risks that much harder.
Without sales intelligence solutions to help you out, you will certainly be unable to develop strong, repeatable strategies that will help you scale your sales.
What Is Sales Intelligence?
By definition, sales intelligence is the practice of collecting, consolidating, and analyzing data from a variety of sources for actionable insights that improve sales and revenue. Typically, sales intelligence requires the deployment of sales intelligence solutions that equip sales teams with relevant information about who they engage with.
The best sales intelligence software in the market can be categorized into six categories in line with what they are tailored to do:
All in One Sales Intelligence Tools
These tools are the most effective of the bunch. They do everything from lead generation to scoring for insights for better messaging and outreach. They are aimed towards making the sales process more effective.
Prospecting and Lead Generation Sales Intelligence Tools
These tools are designed for the initial steps of your sales cycle. These steps include lead generation, lead scoring, and prospecting. All these help sales teams identify ideal customers and find more prospects who fit the same bill.
Sales Intelligence Tools for Lead Nurturing
A sales intelligence company that specializes in this is an expert at tracking how leads move through the buyer’s journey, including helping you figure out which prospects are most likely to ultimately convert into customers.
Sales Data Reporting and Forecasting Tools
These tools help sales teams better understand individual and team performance. They help in determining whether sales processes can be improved. They also help forecast upcoming sales.
B2B Sales Intelligence Tools for Company Information
B2B intelligence software are tools designed specifically for B2B salespersons with the focus on selling to an entire company.
Contact Data and Database Management Sales Intelligence Tools
These tools are all geared towards reaching and contacting prospects. If you can’t reach a prospect, you can’t sell to them, right?
These tools solve that issue so you always find the right contact information for your decision makers to contact them.
Why You Need Sales Intelligence Tools
Improve B2B and B2C Sales Targeting
All businesses are either B2B or B2C solutions providers. B2B businesses need different sales intelligence strategies from B2C businesses, such as B2B intelligence software.
For instance, Customer Relationship Systems (CRMs) are excellent for gauging when the next sale may happen for B2B sellers. This enables sales teams to stay in consistent contact with the client. The idea behind this is to retain customers for repeat business because clients could be finite in your line of expertise. As such, losing a client could be very damaging.
On the other hand, customers are not finite in the B2C world. As such, B2C businesses may not feel the pinch of losing a single customer that much. They can be easily replaced with new customers. B2C businesses use CRMs to periodically send marketing content to consumers.
Enhanced Sales Visibility
Often, sales intelligence solutions are integrated into customer relationship management platforms. These solutions enable all users to see all current information about a client or business. Insights from this information make sure all teams know the status of the client or a particular sale.
The good thing about CRMs is you can also access them using mobile phones. As such, you can quickly get updated on all the latest information on your way to a meeting.
Better Outreach Timing
A sales intelligence company will help you contact buyers at exactly the right time. You’ll be better able to find that sweet spot between contacting potential buyers too early or too late.
They use sales intelligence tools to analyze data from the client’s previous sales to better determine when a product will be needed next.
