InsideView

InsideView is one of the most robust tools when it comes to prospecting, and it continues to go wider and deeper. It's a great tool for keeping your data up to date by tracking what's happening within accounts across the Internet. It allows you to sort through its prospect database to track, and even contact, companies with relevant trigger events.

InsideView provides sales reps with updates on all business and social events that are happening for each prospect. This consists of notifications and daily e-mail alerts that are delivered directly to your in-box. InsideView can also provide a real-time dossier on every prospect in your customer relationship management (CRM) system; hence the phrase “CRM intelligence.”

You can even use InsideView to figure out which connections in your network can introduce you to potential buyers who are on your list. This works through connected social networks and a company's internal employee networks.

FunnelFire

FunnelFire is an online sales intelligence platform that allows users to filter prospect-related online data. FunnelFire continuously tracks keywords across thousands of news sources. In normal use, this allows users to find relevant articles about industry topics to use in their sales process. Another way to use this data is to have FunnelFire identify companies mentioned in different ways and with different trigger events. Several customers use this data to help them identify new companies to target.

When their software combines this with e-mail alerts on trigger events, end users can be notified about new companies falling into particular trigger events and then use this information to find new leads.

A publicly traded company can use FunnelFire in several ways. On a daily basis, the marketing team gets inbound leads. These leads get pushed automatically into the team's CRM system. The CRM system automatically assigns the sales reps based on territory and a number of rules. Through the CRM system's integration, profiles on these new leads are generated in real-time. These profiles are compiled from thousands of data sources and profiles across the Internet, and a dossier is created instantaneously so that sales reps can gather information and assess the company in seconds.

Mark LaRosa, chief executive officer (CEO) of FunnelFire, adds:

Most of the sales process has been completed by the time reps call on prospects. Prospects are more educated than ever, because data is everywhere. As a result, they expect sales reps to be just as educated.

DiscoverOrg

DiscoverOrg is a sales and marketing intelligence platform that is set apart by the fact that it employs a team that consistently dials into accounts to make sure its database information is fresh. DiscoverOrg almost acts as your pre-SDR (sales development rep), gathering company and market information, following trigger events and job changes, and figuring out an organization's structure and contact information.

DiscoverOrg integrates with many top CRM systems and even offers a browser extension for real-time use.

Predictive Sales and Web Signaling

This area of the sales stack is a really interesting new wrinkle in the mix. The companies in this chapter are working on ways to take information from your past deals, your top keywords, public information, news, and other buying signals to create a web of potential buyers.

This is the power of the new era in sales. Salespeople never would have been able to see these potential leads in the past. Developers are bringing their expertise to our playing fields, and it's just getting interesting. The following tools allow you to see and capitalize on your lowest-hanging fruit.

Infer

Infer provides you with what is called “predictive lead scoring.” Infer integrates with your data via CRM or marketing automation software to develop a customized list of buying signals that it can then use to find companies looking to buy from you. All you need is an e-mail address or company name, and Infer can build a robust buying profile for that lead.

Infer can also tell you which of your current marketing qualified leads (MQLs) you can consider more easily closable than other leads. Infer does this based on multiple factors that it gathers from public information, such as recent news, company size, new job openings, social media use, legal filings, and so forth.

Infer also uses the data from your CRM system and pairs it with machine learning so that, when you input a new lead, Infer can give you an accurate lead score based on past deal wins and losses.

Compile

Compile aggregates data from the Internet, including, among others, message board chatter, budget documents, security advisories, and news sites.

A natural language processor-based engine called the Autocurator sifts through the data to identify only those bits that indicate a potential sales opportunity. The engine identifies patterns that indicate a clear buying action.

For example, a technology road map presentation discussing a new citywide Wi-Fi network or a recent data breach at a global organization is a good indicator of a need for a specific product and would show up publicly across the Internet.

Using a trained set of known good and bad leads, the Autocurator assigns a score to each lead. Only those leads that display a clear buying trigger and strong relevance to your product are retained. These leads are then paired with the contact information of the buyers and pushed to the Compile dashboard, e-mail digest, or your CRM tool.

Other tools to check out in this category include Mintigo and MightySignal.

Use Your Network

There are a few solid products whose core business models are to provide you with the full use of your professional networks. This means that you can use your friends and colleagues to facilitate warm introductions, effectively speeding up deal cycles.

Conspire

By connecting your e-mail account and allowing it to analyze your e-mail data, Conspire understands who you know and how well you know them. With that understanding, Conspire finds the strongest path of connections in your extended network to the people and companies you are trying to reach.

Landing deals early at a start-up is difficult because potential customers don't know anything about the company. In such cases, a warm introduction is key to getting attention and, potentially, a meeting. Sales reps use Conspire to prioritize leads according to how strong an introduction they can get from their professional network (including current or former colleagues, friends, classmates, etc.) When the reps have strong paths, they are able to get meaningful introductions from people who know both the reps and the targets well. This means that the relationship with the potential customers starts with a high degree of trust.

Conspire is using data and science to understand the strength of connections between you and your friends, and your friends and your targeted leads. This will tell you whether those friends can make a good enough introduction for you. Now you can know the best possible path to a warm introduction.

According to Alex Devkar, CEO of Conspire:

The problem with other professional networks is that they do not accurately reflect a person's real relationships. First, the model of sending a connection request and accepting means all connections look the same—whether you met someone for 5 minutes or worked with them closely for 5 years. Second, you have to manually maintain their list of connections by adding new ones and removing fading connections, which in practice does not happen.

A similar sentiment comes from Mark Roberge, chief revenue officer of HubSpot, who would rather have his sales reps sell to people they know instead of focusing on predetermined territories.

If you think about territories, they grew out of sales teams who knocked on doors. That's the whole point. Put your people where the doors are. For whatever reason, it is still around. Either way you should organize your sales team by the buyer persona.

Having a usable network is a huge advantage. Make sure it's well leveraged by your sales team and organization.

Also check out KiteDesk to see which business connections you could leverage to gain access to your Accounts in Salesforce. Connection strength is scored in order to tell you your best possible access point.

In addition, take a look at ProLeads to get a view of your best path to contact a lead and insights into what to put in the initial e-mail you send to that lead.

Getting Information on Your Individual Prospect