Here’s a quick way to boost B2B sales by more than 43 percent: embrace the world of real-time big data.
That’s right – according to a new report by Forrester, companies using technology that links to CRM software in real-time closed 43 percent more deals than those using traditional tools (e.g. internal information, customer-facing websites). Before heading into a new B2B sales meeting, then, you want to make sure you know as much as possible about the customer and be able to grab data on the fly.
In short, you can effectively prepare for a B2B sales call by tapping into real-time data. Forrester calls this “an evolved selling model,” as it represents an evolution of the classic B2B selling approach that uses static data. One example of a company that’s doing this right is SmartFocus (formerly known as PivotLink), which offers real-time contextual marketing.
In the new report, “How B2B Sellers Win In the Age of the Customer,” Forrester outlined exactly why all this real-time data is so important to B2B sales teams. Based on extensive surveys of buyers and sellers, Forrester outlined four specific aspects of real-time big data that makes it so powerful for B2B sales teams:
The seller’s ability to aggregate the most accurate content from various online sources on the fly;
The seller’s ability to capture input from the buyer to guide the discussion;
The seller’s ability to pull in specific data in real-time from a customer database such as an internal CRM system; and
The seller’s ability to capture and analyze how specific content or interactions can affect sales results within a company’s existing CRM platform.
As Forrester points out, there are three core aspects to CRM – sales, customer service and marketing. The ability to get all three of those aspects of a business talking to each other in real-time can be very powerful.
How powerful? Well, Forrester says that this “new type of selling solution” can lead to an 82 percent increase in a buyer’s likelihood to consider a company for a new sales, as well as a 70 percent lift in buyers buying more than they initially planned.
Putting all this together, companies can create a sales model where prospects are more likely to consider you for a sale; deals are more likely to be signed; and buyers end up buying more than you thought they would.
“Unfortunately, most of today’s sales forces are ill-equipped to sell in a dynamic, insights-
driven and non-linear fashion,” according to Forrester Research. “B2B sellers need to be armed with a new type of selling solution that enables them to be nimble and engaging in their customer interactions.”
Of course, you can take all this as just more CRM sales hype. CRM solutions have been around forever, and that means they’ve been evolving as well. But it’s also intuitive that the more you know about your customer, the more likely you are to make the sale. That’s not mumbo-jumbo big data talk, that’s been a cornerstone of selling for centuries.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.