Why B2B Sales Teams Need Contextual and Actionable Insights
This blog post was co-created with the team at Pod, the first AI pipeline coach for B2B sellers.
Since the dawn of modern-day B2B sales, a battle has been brewing between the sellers who think a fully personalized, human approach is always best and those who believe 100% tech-supported (or entirely AI-led) selling is the future.
Unfortunately, if you’re here for a straight answer to the above dilemma, we can’t give you one. The secret to successful B2B sales lies somewhere between ‘chatbots will die out’ and ‘our AI bots are 100% independent, and we human sellers retain no responsibility for their work’ (as an airline argued recently.)
Successful selling has always been about knowing your customer. That means building out your ICP before you start selling, plus empowering your sales team to adapt to the prospect in the moment — whether that means adapting an offer or signing a deal on conditions.
This kind of sales process requires a combination of best-in-class data and the personal relationship-building that only a human sales rep can do. Luckily for B2B sales teams, getting top-quality data to inform your selling strategy has never been easier.
The Consequences of Flying Blind in B2B Sales
Any B2B company worth its salt knows that data is vital to operational decision-making. According to McKinsey research, companies that employ a data-driven sales method report above-market growth and an EBITDA that’s 15% to 25% higher.
Surprisingly, though, many sales teams still aren’t using their data effectively. 40% of companies say their sales teams lack the right account intelligence to sell effectively, and 60% of marketers say the data they do have is unreliable.
Whether you’re yet to gather sales intelligence or collecting mountains of inaccurate or outdated data, the consequences for your B2B sales process are monumental.
Inefficiency
At any given time, as few as 15% of your buyers are actually in market. Combine this stat with the average B2B sales conversion rate, which stands at a little over 2%, and it’s obvious that the chance of inefficient selling is high for B2B sellers.
There’s also a very small window for converting each prospect. Talking to people who aren’t ready, aren’t the decision-makers, or aren’t even part of your ideal ICP (or all three) is a significant drain on your sales resources, which — let’s face it — are probably already stretched.
When B2B sellers spend just two hours a day actually selling, you need to make those hours count. (Or find a way to reduce admin time and grant your SDRs more selling time, but we’ll cover this later.)
Missed opportunities
What’s even worse for your revenue than selling to prospects who aren’t ready to buy? Missing the opportunity to sell to people who are.
B2B buying cycles are getting longer. Typically, buyers don’t engage with sellers until about 70% of the way through the decision-making process, by which point, the chances of influencing a decision are slim.
Without accurate data to identify these decision-makers early, you’re likely letting ideal prospects slip through the net instead of giving yourself time to nurture the right people.
On the other side of things, you should be fighting to keep those customers that you’ve already converted. Just a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to anywhere between a 25% to 95% profit increase — but unless you fancy manually reaching out to every existing customer and asking if they need additional services, you’ll need sales enablement tools to help you out.
Poor customer experience
Cold door-to-door selling might be a thing of the past, but receiving email marketing for a product you have no interest in and no intention of buying can be just as annoying.
Not only does intensive cold outreach increase your risk of selling to people who aren’t the right fit (see point one above), but it can also impact the overall customer experience.
If you’ve been spamming a prospect for weeks who simply isn’t interested, chances are they’ll remember that experience in the future — and may pass you up for a competitor who understands them better.
Cold outreach can be a valuable tool, but only when you know who it is you’re selling to. That’s where personalized selling can come into play: giving your prospect what they need at the most opportune time.
Enabling the Right Action at the Right Time
No B2B seller should be flying blind when talking to a prospect. The moment you hop on a call with them, you should be absolutely sure that you’re speaking to someone who can buy from you (“I’ll need to discuss this with X” is the last thing you want to hear) and is showing intent to purchase.
Understanding who will buy and when they’re ready to buy are the biggest factors influencing your success in B2B sales. Accurate sales insights are the only way to get this information.
Without comprehensive sales data, you’re essentially leaving your B2B sales reps stranded in the Wild West of sales calls without any of the tools they might need to survive. Grit and creativity will only get sales reps so far when the person they’re selling to just isn’t right.
Accurate research into your ICP, leads, and sales process turns every interaction with B2B buyers into a warm interaction, giving your team the best chance of converting.
What are Contextual and Actionable Insights?
The best sales teams make decisions based on real-time data from three distinct areas of a prospect’s profile.
Everything starts with your ICP. If you’re following an account-based marketing strategy, this includes insights related to your target companies and their firmographic data.
After gathering data on your ICP, look at the data on your leads. How are you determining what an MQL or an SQL is? Do you have fully-enriched data on each of your leads?
Finally, your sales reps can use signal data to determine whether the leads arriving at your website are in the market to buy and how likely they are to purchase at any given moment. This signal data provides the crucial ‘timing’ component to your sales strategy, ensuring your reps devote their valuable time to people more likely to convert.
Together, these three data strands help you tap into buyer behavior and interest across the entire sales funnel.
ICP data
To build an effective sales funnel, you need to start with an accurate list of ‘right fit’ accounts. Both internal data (from your CRM) and external research can help you better understand who you’re targeting and why.
Start with the existing data in your CRM. Gather and analyze metrics such as the number of repeat customers and closed won or closed lost deals to determine which kinds of accounts typically buy from you.
Afterward, you can use sales enablement software to help you identify similar accounts in the categories of repeat customers or closed wins.
Meanwhile, closed lost data is a valuable source of information on why certain B2B buyers don’t purchase. For example, you can track how many closed lost accounts have recently purchased a competitor product, giving you a time frame for re-engaging.
Lead data
Once you’ve clarified the types of accounts you want to prospect and adjusted your demand creation strategy accordingly, you should notice an uptick in qualified leads. Ideally, the process of acquiring qualified leads should be assisted by a tailored SEO strategy.
Your first step should be enriching your lead data as it enters your CRM. Data enrichment tools can fill your CRM with up-to-date contact information and identify additional buying committee members.
Other data you can extract from your leads to influence your selling strategy include firm and technographic data. This could consist of company details such as:
- Company size
- Location
- Revenue
- Their current tech stack
- Recent software renewals/purchases
Signals
Buying signals can massively enhance your sales strategy. In the past, sellers were limited to collecting signal data from lead magnets, newsletter sign-ups, and in-person interaction at a trade show or conference. Today, however, there are far more ways to understand if a prospect is likely to buy.
The first kind of signal you want to track is buyer intent: any signal that shows that a potential customer is researching or showing interest in your product or service.
Intent signals can be divided into first-party (data that comes from your website or direct interactions with prospects) and third-party (signals collected by external software like Bombora or 6sense), and you should use a combination of both to evaluate interest.
Other buying signals could come from the company itself. For example, if it’s just raised a funding round or has recently been hired in a key decision-maker role, you can assume it’s somewhere in the market for a new purchase.
Not all intent signals show the same amount of intent, so evaluating the intent data you receive (or using a platform that evaluates it for you) is essential.
Someone from a right-fit company engaging with your social content and subscribing to your newsletter is good, but if they arrive on your website and navigate directly to your pricing page, that’s an even stronger signal.
This kind of signal-based selling is becoming more critical for sales teams. However, buying signals are part of a broader B2B sales strategy that draws accurate data from various sources to make smarter sales decisions.
Insight-Driven Sales Strategies for Your B2B Sales Team
So, you’ve decided to turn to a more data-driven sales strategy. How do you give your sales team the best chance of success?
1. Gather the right data.
Not all data is created equally. Consider the source of any third-party data you’re considering using in your strategy and how accurate or up-to-date you expect it to be.
Likewise, although we’ve outlined a range of data you could use, not every signal will be relevant to your company. Efficient data-driven sales depend on choosing the right data, not all the data.
2. Train and empower B2B sales teams.
The latest HubSpot Sales Trends report found that 82% of sales professionals say building relationships and connecting with people is the most important and most enjoyable element of selling. Spending weeks implementing new software is the opposite of empowering, meaning sales reps have less time than previously.
So, preparing your sales team is just as important as finding the right data. Find tools that can make evaluating all those juicy insights quick and seamless.
It’s not about cramming your tech stack full of trending AI assistants but selecting the tools that offer instant insights and a clean UX to boost sales productivity.
3. Evaluate and refine.
A data-driven sales strategy provides more opportunities for iterative improvements — but only if you regularly evaluate sales performance.
Additionally, the problem for many sales teams when implementing a data-driven approach is adding too many tools simultaneously. Almost half of sales professionals are overwhelmed by the number of tools in their tech stack, and 29% said that actually reducing their tech stack would make them more efficient.
So, if something isn’t working, reevaluate your strategy. The core advantage of a data-driven sales process is providing holistic insights, and your operations should be adaptable enough to change if necessary.
Top Tools for Optimized Sales Insights
1. Warmly
Warmly combines best-in-class intent data with seamless tech stack integrations to help your sales teams work smarter, not harder. Starting with website visitor deanonymization, live video chat, and AI chatbots, we enrich your CRM with accurate prospect data and pull in buyer intent data to show you which prospects are really in the market to buy.
After that, the magic really happens. Warmly uses those insights to automatically implement outreach sequences to the best-fit prospects. This personalized messaging co-occurs across email, chatbot, and LinkedIn, enabling you to find your prospects wherever they are and nurture them accordingly.
2. Pod
Pod is the first AI pipeline coach for B2B sellers. It gives Account Executives direction on what deals to focus on and the information they need to close those opportunities.
When sellers log into Pod, they can find their deals prioritized, telling them exactly what to focus on and what is at risk. Then, throughout the workday, Pod keeps reps focused on the sales tasks, including preparing for meetings and prioritizing upcoming sales deals.
3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn is a powerful space for B2B selling, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you harness the power of that social network more efficiently. It can help you prioritize accounts engaging with your content and give you essential company signals like recent hires or job changes.
4. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is a full-stack GTM solution for enterprise organizations. Its capabilities range from visitor identification and intent data to marketing, talent outreach, and hiring. Given its extensiveness, ZoomInfo can be an excellent option for teams with the budget to invest in an end-to-end solution.
5. HubSpot
Since it acquired Clearbit, HubSpot has significantly enhanced its sales enablement solutions. Clearbit is now the ‘HubSpot Native Data Provider,’ providing users of HubSpot’s sales solutions with tools like real-time data enrichment. Like ZoomInfo, it’s not the best solution for smaller sales teams. Still, given the breadth of HubSpot’s features and market-leading marketing solutions, it can be a valuable all-around solution.
The Future of B2B Sales: Warmbound
We built Warmly to empower smaller sales teams to sell more efficiently by prioritizing warm leads over all leads. If signal-selling is the next trend in B2B sales, warmbound is the inevitable next step.
Warmbound means identifying only the most accurate warm signals and using them to inform your outreach strategy. When all the data you’re reviewing points to a prospect being genuinely interested in your brand and product, your sales team can sell faster.
Interested in seeing how we enable smarter, warmer selling? Book a demo today, or get started with Warmly for free.
