In the age of digitalization, companies have to work smarter instead of harder in trying to increase their sales. For this purpose, various techniques are adopted, among which sales intelligence plays an immensely useful role.
Every company we know of today has invested a great deal in sales intelligence, so for the uninitiated, let us try and understand what it is all about and how it helps to close deals for companies.
What is sales intelligence?
Sales intelligence is the collection of information about prospective customers through various channels and sources. It is done with the help of advanced technology. It involves the entire process of collecting, compiling, analyzing, and then evaluating the data gained about and from potential customers. It can also help to generate leads and give you all the latest information about customers. Using a wide range of technologies for this purpose ends up saving a lot of research time which would have been wasted, had the research been done manually. To put it simply, sales intelligence is the recipe for winning over your market by identifying the target audience and improving sales. The information gathered gives an insight to the sales team about the buying behavior of prospective customers. It helps them plan their strategies better.
Why is sales intelligence important?
It saves the time and effort of the sales team to formulate strategies for marketing. Once there is data about the buying preferences of prospective customers, it is easier for the company to calculate their actions and make informed decisions in catering to the target audience. Identifying a target area and the audience is always beneficial in growing sales and for this purpose sales intelligence is of great help to any business or company.
How does sales intelligence work?
Companies invest in many tools for sales intelligence processing. Each tool works differently but they do the same job of gathering data from various sources on and off the internet. They use websites to identify buying patterns of people, they make use of cookie data, they also find out which products are commonly purchased and from where, etc. All this information is stored in the form of encoded data, which is then analyzed by the software itself with the help of experts.
What are the benefits of sales intelligence?
- Helps to design better sales strategies
Once a company has enough data on its hands about market trends, prospective customers, and their buying behaviors, the sales team can design suitable sales strategies to ensure that they close in more deals. Without optimum steps, they would be firing in the dark. The data from sales intelligence gives them the right direction to proceed in.
- It makes sales cycles shorter
Targeting one customer who is sure to make a sales decision is much better than targeting 10 people who might not necessarily be able to influence the sales pattern. These insights are obtained using sales intelligence. By making the sales cycles shorter, it saves time which can then be utilized to cater to those prospective customers in real-time.
- Real-time insights
All the information or data gathered is in real-time. The software tools pick up information as and when it is uploaded on the internet giving a real-time update of the purchase trends and market patterns. Outdated information is of no use for the companies and so with sales intelligence they can stay up-to-date with everything that goes on in the retail as well as the wholesale market.
How is sales intelligence useful in closing in more deals?
Sales intelligence tools gather unimaginable amounts of information. With so much data at a company’s disposal, they can naturally make the most of it by catering to the exact needs of customers. Specifically targeted marketing plans for the target audience helps in pulling in those prospective customers. The best way to get customers to react to strategies is to make them feel heard and special. By studying data from sales intelligence, companies can give an open ear to the suggestions and preferences of customers. This attracts more people to buy products and avail services.
Secondly, direction-oriented plans significantly increase the growth rate of sales. The profit margin is also higher and so closing deals becomes an achievable task.
When used in the right capacity, sales intelligence can be very potent. It can give you beneficial insights into your competition and help you maneuver business effectively. So, determine your best possible way to gather sales data and make the most of it for higher sales.