Making a successful sales conversion is often a matter of knowing your client really, really well. The initial conversation between potential customer and product proprietor is not unlike a first date following an encounter on “the apps”: the chances of getting a second date will be much better if you take the time to read their profile, click through their pictures, and come prepared with some initial understanding of their wants and needs.
And the digital era has provided organizations with unique and seemingly limitless access to relevant information that allow them to better understand not only the unique goals and behaviors of a target information, but also their context within an industry, and how the conditions of that industry might affect their buying potential.
So where do you get this information? Let’s talk about it.
Ways to research sales leads and what you can learn
Between company profiles, organizational data, and industry news sources, your team might learn all there is to know about a target account with just a few mouse clicks. Here are a few best practices for engaging the various research resources at your disposal.
Using Linkedin to research sales leads
A primary point of access for gaining an initial understanding of an organization, LinkedIn cannot offer you an in-depth analysis of organizational data, however will give you a very in-depth – if sometimes incomplete – look at a company’s employee base, size, industry, stock, revenue and experience.
In terms of researching a sales lead, where LinkedIn offers its best potential is in guiding you towards the right people to talk to to begin building a professional relationship between your two organizations. The social aspect of the platform also allows you to easily find, understand, and communicate with a target’s sales and purchasing departments for a more personal outreach experience leading to better conversion rates.
Using other socials to research sales leads
Similar to the above platform, additional social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram allow you to get to know an organization’s people and develop custom outreach tactics that inject an edge of personality into professional interactions.
With access to both organizational profiles and employee profiles, you can get a broad perspective on organizational goals and motivations, in addition to the objectives and needs of individuals working within the organization. The c-suite at your target organization may not have a specified use case for your product, but a professional at ground level within said organization’s development or sales department might, and you can learn this through social media.
How to use Glassdoor to find sales leads
Organizational profiles on glassdoor provide a variety of useful firmographic data, as well as employee accounts which provide special insight into day-to-day company functionality and structure. The firmographic aspect of what Glassdoor offers allows you to quickly and easily assess organizational fit, and determine whether a target company will in fact be a good match for your product.
An at-a-glance company profile gives you a quick download of all the organizational basics, including industry, company type, company size in terms of employee numbers, revenue, headquarters, website, and even mission statement. With this information you can make initial inferences as to what use case an organization might have for your product, and use that to design your outreach and marketing.
Company pages/ recent news/ press releases for sales lead research
An organization’s website can be relied upon to give you a very broad overview of company goals, culture, mission, and in some cases relationship to technology. You can also engage company domain information to access other aspects of a company. Learn more here: Company name vs. company domain.
In the case of an enterprise organization, press releases should also be engaged to understand changes happening within the company, financial statements, and philosophical adaptations which might drive expenditure or technological expansion.
Global news can also give important indications as to the state of a given industry. Supply chain blockages, political disruptions, road closures, etc. may provide critical insight into the health of a given company, and should be incorporated into your sales strategy.
Using industry news to research sales leads
Similar to the above point, industry news provides you with information which is specifically relevant to the health of a given industry. A sideways cargo ship in the Suez Canal will affect some industry, although if your industry, or your client’s industry, is failing to report on it, it may prove irrelevant to your research.
Industry news also typically provides information specific to businesses within or adjective to the relevant industry, including their financial situations, mergers, structural changes, and others which may directly impact their expenditure and technological engagement.
CRM data for better sales lead data
The deepest and most comprehensive organizational insights you can gain is your own customer/ client relationship management information, which synthesizes demographic, firmographic, and global data to create an actionable company profile and corporate behavioral analysis.
CRM data is typically compiled via data gathering, as well as input gathered from your interactions with a client. Alternatively, this can mean a target organization’s CRM data, incorporating their own B2C or B2B interactivity data which gives an even more in-depth look at the day-to-day functionality and finances of a business.
What your sales team is missing
Much of the lead research your sales team needs access to can be found via public profiles, news releases, and other easily accessible information outlets that require at most a boolean phrase to locate. Such is the nature of the digital age.
However, in order to construct truly powerful marketing and sales tactics, your team needs access to better, less readily-available data to gain better insight into an organization.
Intricately can help
Intricately provides an unparalleled competitive advantage with B2B data insights unmatched by other services. Any information you might find via public outlets can be infinitely elaborated upon via the Intricately service. Know not only how big a company is, how large their yearly revenue, and their historic relationship to technology, but also their monthly expenditure, cloud product engagement, and specific use cases for your product.
