What Is Sales Intelligence? (And How to Use It to Close More Deals)

More than half (59%) of business buyers say most reps don't take the time to understand their goals, according to the latest Salesforce State of Sales Report. Being a seller can feel like playing the role of detective. You piece together clues about your prospects and customers, gathering sales intelligence on who they are and how you can best help them.

But prospects also expect you to investigate them. It improves problem-solving and shows that you're interested in collaborating and engaging for the long term.

The State of Sales Report also found that 86% of business buyers are more inclined to buy when vendors demonstrate an understanding of their goals. This expectation is why practicing sales intelligence — collecting data and insights about buyers — is essential to ensure an effective sales process.

• What is sales intelligence?
• Why is sales intelligence important for sales?
• 5 types of sales intelligence
• Best practices for using sales intelligence
• What to look for in sales intelligence software

Sales intelligence is the collection of data and insights used to make informed and strategic decisions throughout the sales process. Sellers use sales intelligence to gather and analyze information about prospects and customers, helping them understand their needs and close more deals. Using the right tools and software allows them to streamline this process.

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Sales intelligence prepares sellers with data and insights before entering a sales call, meeting, or other interaction with a prospect or customer. By doing their homework, sellers can confidently approach conversations and tailor their points to better resonate with the prospect. Anticipating the prospect's unique needs and objectives allows the seller to show how their product is a solution.

For instance, let's say a seller from a project management software company is preparing for a sales meeting with an apparel retailer. The seller researches the retailer's website and discovers a press release announcing its expansion into Europe. They then use this insight to highlight how the software can streamline the expansion projects.

Sales intelligence helps at all stages of the sales cycle, from prospecting to closing the deal, and with meeting sales KPIs. At the start, sellers can use it to prioritize the right leads and personalize their outreach. Further along in the sales process, more advanced intelligence is gathered to create a more robust set of sales data. Over time, sellers build up their sales intelligence with more precise data and insights to help them target prospects and customers with solutions specific to them.

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Sales intelligence data builds a profile of your prospect and their company with information relevant to their behaviors and needs. There are five main types of sales data that you should collect and analyze.

This is intelligence on your prospect's company. Examples include industry, company size/number of employees, number of physical locations (or remote), annual revenue, growth stage, and products or services offered. Firmographic data can be used to match companies with sellers that specialize in specific territories or industries.

Also known as personal or demographic data, this is intelligence on your prospect or customer. This can include name, job title and description, division or department, social media, email, phone number, and business address. Sellers use contact data to personalize outreach and to contact prospects through multiple channels, such as email and phone.

This is intelligence on your prospective company's technology consumption and usage in operations. This might include tools, software, hardware, processes and workflows, and IT infrastructure. Sellers of technology-related products and services can use the data to show how their product improves a company's technology stack.

Also known as buyer signals or buyer intent data, sales event triggers are points in time at a prospect's company that may create a sales opportunity. Examples include expansion into new markets or product lines, new funding, hiring activity or promotions, layoff activity, mergers and acquisitions, and awards or recognitions. These occurrences within a company present sellers with a timely opening to contact prospects and demonstrate how their solution can help navigate the changes.

This is information about an account that emerges during the sales process. It can also be historical deal data from past sales. You might include budget and pricing, timelines and seasonality, competitor feedback, and upsells or cross-sells. Deal data helps sellers identify sales trends to know the solution that will best resonate with customers and prospects.

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Your goal with gathering sales intelligence is to create a simple and concise narrative of your sales account that includes relevant information about the business so you can understand your customers' needs. Start with gathering company-level data to get an idea of the business' priorities and problems internally and in the wider market. Then move on to the person-level data and look for intelligence on how the company data impacts them and their team.

The adoption of AI in sales has sped up sales intelligence. According to the State of Sales Report, 4 in 5 sales teams are experimenting with or have already implemented AI. AI can sift through the vast amount of available sales intelligence, pull relevant insights, and create a summary. For example, a seller can input a link to a lengthy annual report into AI and ask it to pull findings related to the launch of a new product.

Input your company- and person-level data in your customer relationship management (CRM) platform. The CRM software unifies and centralizes your internal and external sales intelligence data. A CRM can automatically capture and sync relevant sales intelligence from your email, calendar, and calls, keeping your records accurate and eliminating the need for error-prone manual entry. The next step is to tie the multiple pieces of intelligence together for your outreach. Look at the sales intelligence for connections between how your product or service can help solve the prospect's pain points or needs.

Equip sellers with sales enablement resources and training to successfully use sales intelligence tools for gathering, tracking, and analyzing data. The State of Sales Report reveals that 3 in 4 sales reps say their company's enablement programs prepare them to meet their quotas. When sellers attain their quotas, they are on track to help the company reach its revenue goals. According to the report, employees have high satisfaction in the sales enablement areas of support materials, product-specific training, and training on technology and tools. Establish a library of sales enablement content to onboard new sellers about sales intelligence techniques. Include training videos, slide decks, and data sheets.

You have several sources of sales intelligence data at your fingertips. One of the best sources is to ask your prospect directly for information about them and their company. These are some other sources to check out:

• Company websites: Websites contain firmographic data including backgrounds, bios, annual reports, media kits, leadership biographies, and content or resources such as blog posts and case studies. Company press releases are a source for sales event triggers.
• Social media: Research social media for both the company's pages and postings as well as your contact's social media. Professional sites like LinkedIn contain firmographic and contact data.
• Industry resources: Search for industry reports, surveys, focus groups, and competitor activity from industry trade associations and internet searches.
• Public records: Conduct an internet search of business directories, government documents, legal records, and corporate filings on the federal level and in the state where the company is registered.
• Internal records: Deal and technographic data can be gathered from your CRM, billing, product or service usage, and customer feedback.

Implementing sales intelligence solutions with your sales team can present some issues. These are some best practices to overcome common challenges:

• Too many accounts and not enough time: Reps only spend 30% of their time selling during an average week and the other time on nonsales activities like researching prospects or prioritizing leads and opportunities (according to the State of Sales. AI has helped to speed up collecting and analyzing sales intelligence at scale so that salespeople can turn it into actionable insights.
• Finding the sweet spot between too little and too much research: Tools such as AI have accelerated sales intelligence efforts, but sellers still must find the balance between how much time and effort to put into sales intelligence to see positive sales outcomes. In my experience, it helps to have a deep understanding of your prospect's industry or market to efficiently find the relevant points. Set up alerts on your internet browser to track news and publications related to your industry.
• Forgetting to use sales intelligence throughout the sales cycle: In the excitement of almost closing a sale, sellers often overlook the sales intelligence that could be crucial to getting the deal across the finish line. Review your sales intelligence, and pinpoint the insights that most resonated with the prospect and highlight those during your close.

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Sales intelligence software can minimize the tedious manual effort of collecting and analyzing sales intelligence. The software is often powered by AI to bring together intelligence from multiple sources. Ideally, your sales intelligence tools will integrate with your CRM to sync the sales intelligence with your other customer data. It should also integrate with your other sales tools, such as forecasting, analytics, and performance, to maintain consistency across the entire sales team.

The software should be easy for your team to learn and use. It should also offer security to ensure your sales intelligence is protected and kept private. Look for sales intelligence software with sales AI features and capabilities for intelligence collection and analysis:

• AI-powered insights: Use AI insights to prioritize deals based on lead potential, opportunity health, and relevant sales activities. The AI feature helps sellers more accurately predict forecasts and sales pipelines.
• Prospect and account research with real-time news: Look for software that pulls in sales intelligence data on prospect and customer updates happening in the media using a news application programming interface (API). A news API automatically collects and distributes news articles from various third-party sources based on your predefined parameters.
• Conversation insights and mining: As deals progress, you will add more account data to your CRM's vault of sales intelligence. AI makes it easier to pick up on these tidbits of information during your sales calls. Conversation intelligence uses AI and machine learning to collect and analyze a seller's interactions with customers. It identifies intelligence such as company news or a prospect's promotion.
• Auto-generation of contextual emails: Use a sales intelligence tool's generative AI capabilities to draft personalized prospecting or customer emails based on sales intelligence from your CRM and external data. AI can save sellers time by picking up relevant intelligence based on a customer's recent activity or behaviors. For example, a company that has new funding for a product launch may be interested in an email about the seller's marketing software.

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By collecting data and insights about your customers and prospects, you'll have a stronger understanding of who they are and how your product or service can be most relevant to their needs. Sales intelligence tools supported by AI help you quickly gather and analyze essential data and use it as your foundation of information throughout the sales process.

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