Lots of Data — But Where Are the Insights?

There are a number of challenges that sellers face  just trying to keep up with the realities of ever-changing industries. Many of the encountered hurdles are common across competitive markets and growing industries. 

Your sales team is key to company growth. From product knowledge and marketing collateral to industry trends and insight into customer direction and focus – teams across organizations are working hard to ensure the sellers have the information they require to effectively close deals.  

According to this State of Sales report by Salesforce, over 80% of sales reps on high performing teams said their company gave them the resources they needed to succeed. These resources are critical for engaging customers and closing deals.

However, all this data can cause sellers to have a difficult time keeping up with the rapidly changing landscapes across their accounts. In addition to maintaining current product knowledge, sales teams juggle dozens of current client situations, potential new opportunities, and various contract negotiation and closing situations. This activity can at times create situations where sales reps lose track of important information that can have a significant impact on a deal and ultimately building their business. 

Real-Time Information for Each Customer Meeting

An important aspect of sales enablement is to help the sales team to stay on top of industry and organizational changes impacting the customer. Being up-to-date on the latest and greatest information will help you better understand your customer and their challenges. This approach allows for your sellers to have more meaningful conversations. 

A good place to start is by asking the following questions:

1. Are there specific market changes that are impacting the customer?
2. What information do prospects and customers already have by the time they engage with your sellers?
3. Is your sales team having conversations with the right people?
4. What is creating friction inside of the sales process?
5. How is the buyer’s journey changing?

Finding the answers to these questions will give you a starting point for where to direct your focus and what information to provide your sellers.

At times like these, a curated insights tool that provides customized daily information about customers, partners, competitors and the market can help empower sales teams by providing them with the most up-to-date information relevant to their deals and accounts.

Information that can impact a deal, such as a merger, acquisition, management changes, and financial realities can be extremely beneficial if served up in a timely fashion. However, more often than not, many businesses first learn of these changes on the phone with a customer who’s explaining why they can’t do business with them this year. Collecting information on the direction that a client’s business is taking next year, or the industry specific challenges they’re facing and looking to overcome, will help your sales reps have meaningful conversations that add real value, and not ones that come off as ill-informed and underprepared. 

From case studies and data sheets to the latest news on your competitors, Sales Enablement plays a vital role in helping your sales team engage customers and close deals. If your organization doesn’t know what the competition is doing, or if it isn’t trying to keep track of how the market is changing and adjusting, you may miss out on key opportunities to advance a different strategy, pivot appropriately, and take the lead on key messaging changes.

Customer Insights App Makes You the Smartest Person in the Meeting

Many of the sellers we spoke with are using Ignite’s FirstRain solution before anything else — before checking their email, and before diving into customer accounts. 

FirstRain decodes complex unstructured business information to build robust and highly intuitive analytics that drive smart decisions. FirstRain’s technology analyzes the global and social web and your internal unstructured data to help you grow revenue by feeding you the right business-critical information in the right place at the right time.

FirstRain interface with top account insights and priorities

A sales leader using FirstRain for awareness and as a lead-generator, is leveraging new information about a customer to get introductions within the account  — “It’s my morning coffee … my wake-up call.” 

FirstRain is the way that he starts every day, with a full-fledged media survey of his customer accounts and news about his product lines of interest. 

Another sales manager we spoke with who manages a team of 20 sellers uses FirstRain as a coaching and management tool — “It’s my first activity of the day. And if my boss is doing something first thing in the day, I’d better take note of that. There’s got to be some value, right?” 

We also spoke with a sales professional tasked with go-to-market strategies for alliances. He uses FirstRain to help connect partners with sellers. He said, “It is my one-stop shop for information I need about partners and customers”.

The value FirstRain brings to their organizations is clear to all the sellers we speak with. They understand how the most updated and relevant information is critical to sellers and marketers, and how this information enables them to better understand prospects, have meaningful conversations, generate more leads and accelerate sales.

Daily news and updates on customers and competitors can be a powerful differentiator and can benefit not only sales but also marketing and corporate leadership across industries. FirstRain brings the latest and most relevant customer, competitor and market updates and provides sellers and marketers with information to help generate leads, accelerate sales and understand their clients.

Learn more about FirstRain by visiting ignitetech.com/firstrain to request your own demonstration of the platform and to see how FirstRain can work for you and your business.