1to1 Magazine - November/December 2008 - (Page 41) data. Moving to an integrated data set, he said during his presentation at Forrester’s Marketing Forum earlier this year, requires a combination of corporate mandates and the right kinds of tools. “Unless you ask for an integrated brand, you won’t get it.” Using a digital asset management system, Dell now manages a common repository for all data and also has consolidated its data sources. “This is the way the advanced guard is going at the moment,” Shearer says. “Any sensible company will follow.” > Mila D’Antonio Putting An End to Cold Leads A little insight can go a long way toward closing a sale. Here’s how some reps are getting it. Thanks to social media and the proliferation of personal information available online, salespeople are more effectively engaging and building relationships with prospective clients and current customers. Social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook, along with business information providers like ZoomInfo, InsideView, and Jigsaw, deliver insights previously unavailable to most salespeople. “In sales, doing research ahead of time is essential and these sites are a wealth of knowledge if used correctly,” says Scott Allen, coauthor of The Virtual Handshake. “Doing your homework by finding out “Doing your homework by finding out about about targeted clients gives you an edge, targeted clients gives you an edge it shows and it shows clients that you’re clients that you’re addressing their needs.” addressing their needs and speaking to their individual challenges instead of treating them like just another presentation for that quarter’s quota.” Demographic information is important, he says, but what salespeople are looking at now is a client’s psychographic profile. That type of information isn’t available through list services, but a social network profile reveals a deeper portrait of clients, including hobbies, affiliations, and in some cases even their favorite movies or books. Allen highlights how effective using one piece of information found on LinkedIn can be during a sales meeting. “A salesman I met told me that in researching a company he was pitching, he discovered that an executive at the company had an interest in ballroom dancing,” he says. “He decided to use dance metaphors like partnering and leading throughout his presentation. The executive sat silent, nodding his head in agreement each time [the salesman] used the metaphor. He was an underdog going in, but got a huge contract out of it because of that one interest the guy listed on his profile.” Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, says that a little research like that to get in the door is all salespeople need to stand out in the ever-growing crowd. “Today corporations get pitched by so many people that the price of admission requires additional research and a deep understanding of what that company and its employees are going through…[like] looking at triggered events that happen within or external to a company that cause it to shift priorities.” Lower-than-expected earnings, new product launches, changes to legislation, even severe weather conditions are examples of the events salespeople need to look at to understand a prospect’s state of mind. Much of this information is readily available online through services like Google Alerts, RSS feeds on investment pages, and business journals, but that kind of research is time consuming—which is why business information sites are growing. “All companies know how to measure is how many calls people are making, and salespeople buy into the mentality that if they’re calling then they’re working hard, no matter how strategic the calls are,” Konrath says. “Managers focus on filling the pipeline with as many prospects as possible, instead of developing a thought-out approach to who they should be targeting.” Allen agrees that measuring the impact of this kind of customer insight keeps companies SALES e offe s c e! It tim make it a pleasurable experience, to shake it up a little bit, that’s what can surprise and delight your customers. It can be a real difference-maker in how people enjoy your service.” The “Every Day” component reflects McDerment’s belief that “You can do everything great for a week, but then if you fall back on your haunches, you lose all that. You have to prove yourself to people. It may be hard to build a reputation, but it’s 10 times harder to sustain it.” The privately held FreshBooks is “stable in revenue” and has maintained its position as the largest and fastest-growing online billing service since its 2004 launch. McDerment says the company went from eight employees in 2007 to roughly 25 this year and plans to continue growing aggressively. “We’ve been able to stay ahead of the growth so far, rather than react to it,” McDerment says, “which is how we want to keep it.” > Kevin Zimmerman November/December 2008 41 http://www.1to1media.com/view.aspx?ItemID=29293 http://www.1to1media.com/view.aspx?ItemID=29293
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