Advantage You: How to Baseline Business Intelligence Tools

June 23, 2017

Serving up leads and sales is easy with the right sales intelligence. Knowing what you want in a platform, however, can prove to be a bit more challenging (think trying to take down Serena Williams or Andy Murray: Not an easy task!). We thought we’d break it down a bit, giving you the top four tips for finding your must-have sales resource.

Human-verified data

While a machine can serve you tennis balls to help up your game, one thing technology can’t do accurately is verify data for prospecting. The people checking the data in your business intelligence solution should understand how you’re going to use the information to ensure the data they gather is up to date and useful. Some providers data-scrape websites or social media communities for contact information. But if there’s no verification by actual humans, then the contact information you get could be out of date, inaccurate, or just wrong. Like strawberries and sour cream, or cucumber sandwiches in principle.

Relationship mapping

The ideal business database contact platform needs to break down the who’s who for you in a way that’s accurate, valuable, and easy to understand. You shouldn’t have to guess which agency and marketing contact is working with which brand. Bigger corporations often have multiple marketing divisions, each dealing with individual brands. Sometimes getting the contact information for the CMO of Nissan UK will be less helpful than getting the contact information for the SVP of marketing for the Nissan Micra team. Unless you’re looking for a conversation that ends with “you cannot be serious,” let your sales intelligence platform serve up something you can smash.

Custom filters

Blindly swinging your racquet trying to hit the ball will almost always result in failure. Whether you’re looking for organizations to prospect or waiting to return service, focus and concentration will always get better results. Your sales intelligence platform should allow you to focus on the information you need and cancel out the noise. You don’t want to work with every High Street clothing retailer, so a function that helps you filter media spend or agency specialities allows you to identify your top prospects with one smooth hit. If you can’t narrow down your prospects in the platform, you’re going to end up spending time filtering them manually, and if you’re going to do that you might as well go ahead and make your Pimm’s with 7-Up.

Integrations

While your sales intelligence platform may be the main event, it’s no secret that your sales team uses a variety of resources to perform at their peak. The business database platform you choose should integrate with other information sources, such as LinkedIn to uncover potential connections, and provide CRM integration to help you import and develop leads and prospects. If you work with advertisers, or creative agencies that develop content, look for integrations that give you a firsthand view of potential agencies’ creative work through platforms like AdForum. When resources like Nielsen are connected as well, you can expect to have easy-to-find information on media spending by channel, giving you the advantage over your competition.

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