Sales Intelligence Blog

Creating Actionable Sales Intelligence for B2B Marketers

As technology and society have evolved over the decades, so have customer demands. In fact, consumers are savvier than ever before about what they want and need. For example, did you know that a poor experience could deter up to a third of potential customers? Therefore, it is all the more prudent to work sales intelligence to your advantage.

B2B customers, in general, are among the savviest. That means marketers need to work harder with sales intel that actually drives interest and targets pain points. It’s all about harnessing actionable sales intel - not just collating data for the sake of it.

sales intelligence trends

What is Actionable Sales Intelligence?

Actionable sales intelligence, put simply, is data that B2B marketers can use to target specific demands and needs. More than simple demographic identifiers, this data can help us understand why B2B buyers behave the way they do. Effectively, workable or actionable intel can help marketers create unique strategies to stand out from the pack.

On paper, the more data on B2B demands you have available, the more precise you can make pitches. However, using intel effectively means more than just collating lakes of pure information. By using actionable data, we can create customer profiles and journeys that remove often harmful assumptions.

Modern intelligence software - coupled with traditional data pulling and sales techniques - works hard to build believable avatars. B2B marketers must do more than simply drill down into wide parameters and demographics. They need to identify what the drivers are for even the smallest of decisions.

Actionable intel helps marketers create smooth, organic pitches that genuinely listen to pain points. As a business owner yourself, you’ll likely have many of your own. Consider what you’d like your prospective marketers to target with you - and start building a likewise model.

How to Make Sales Intel Actionable

Having abundant data on one page or in one database is a great start. But, how do you start to make that information helpful in influencing customer journeys? In particular, what’s a sound methodology for ensuring B2B buy-ins?

A good start is to consider becoming data-driven. This is a buzzword that has been around for some time - but there is weight behind it. A data-driven approach ensures that you focus on the details first and emotions later. Effective sales strategy does take emotion into account - but as a first step, pulling and building on data is recommended.

This allows sales staff to get closer to the pain points experienced by your leads. What are their overheads, and who are their competitors? Who are they trying to pitch to in return - and how is that demographic changing? Data pulled from various sources on an intel sweep can prove highly useful in this regard.

It’s also crucial to tailor understanding to bespoke accounts. In B2B, marketers are pitching to the savviest of customers. They have likely undertaken plenty of research on prospective solutions and potential partners. Thus, it’s a good idea to pool the available data and build a personalized approach.

Personalizing and tailoring your pitches helps to smoothen out communication, too. B2B journeys are remarkably complex. Therefore, assumptions and templated pitches are not going to travel well. Targeted messaging - using specific intel data - shows the customer that you’ve ‘done your homework.

Consider your own needs as a consumer. Are you more likely to do business with a broad, sweeping, general pitch or one that tailors to your needs? The answer is likely obvious. While it may seem painstaking, the sheer amount of intel data available for sales teams can help accelerate personal pitching.

Moreover, the potential ROI for targeting individual pitches is likely to be much larger than a generalized approach. Speaking of ROI, too, sales intel can help you to select which marketing techniques are most likely to make an impact. For example, email marketing and SEO continually drive higher ROI for marketing lead take-ups.

Sales Intel - Transforming B2B Sales

Sales data - intelligence - is helping to change the B2B marketing approach for the better. That is, at both ends of the conversation, too. For example, an abundance of intelligence can only help marketers better tune their pitches and approaches. This allows for hyper-accurate profiling and, thus, pitches without assumption.

Beyond this, data used in such intelligence strategies can help to automate funnels. By discerning which data categories and pools are likely to target leads the best, we can delegate tasks to software. Pulling and aggregating the data we need does not have to be a manual process, providing we use practical tools at our disposal.

Intelligence can help us to simplify customer journeys that would otherwise be immensely complex. B2B sales journeys are particularly fragile given the wariness of the average buyer and the specificity of their demands. However, with clearly defined data pools and parameters, this process becomes easier to manage.

In addition to this, buyers can experience less frustrating conversations - and may even be more willing to buy-in. As mentioned, the modern customer expects excellent experiences - and they can make and break brand partnerships. Therefore, to establish trust as early in the sales funnel as possible, it makes sense to get to know who you are pitching better.

This data could fall under several categories. Ultimately, the more comprehensive and precise the approach, the higher the ROI.

It’s all in the Data

Intelligence has never been more beneficial for sales marketers working in B2B. While it may seem relevant or convenient to fall back on older methodology, modern techniques and software support millions. The B2B buyer simply wants to be understood - and with the right data, this is more than achievable. Marketers merely need to become more open to sweeping for wider data and target pitches on a closer level.

Data such as that which is available in real-time via Fundz can be highly influential in building lead profiles. Sales intelligence is leading us away from outdated assumption-making - for the better.

 

SOURCES USED FOR RESEARCH

https://www.b2bmarketing.net/en-gb/resources/articles/top-sales-intelligence-tools-b2b-marketing

https://99firms.com/blog/b2b-marketing-statistics/#gref

https://emissary.io/sales-intelligence-planning/