If you have a CRM system you have to ask yourself the question, is it your my system or my strategy that really makes the difference?
CRM has evolved and is continuing to evolve quickly. The systems or platforms have become extremely powerful and can do much more than what CRM has traditionally referred to. So because of that, we see clients really focusing their efforts on their CRM strategy now. The systems and people that use them have become the vehicles for executing your customer relationship strategy. This strategy affects your mission and your brand and the process you implement sets the coarse of how you will deal with every interaction you have with your client.
In the past CRM was focused on sales and marketing and sales force automation. Now we see companies using CRM in all areas of their business and in the past couple years more and more clients are using it in service and operations to tie in more of their customer interaction. This is because many clients have realized that controlling and being able to monitor everything that can affect their client is a great way to gain customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, thus making it easier to grow their business.
If a company performs well for a client in a number of areas and falls short in only one area, what do you think that client remembers? Because it is so hard and costly to acquire a new client we see many of our customers focusing on controlling every process that affects that client so that they can minimize the risk of problems arising with that client or head them off before they cause a negative experience.
Yes, your CRM system should provide you added efficiency, tracking, single source of information, automated processes but isn't really all about your clients experience. Take a look at your overall strategy and how it is really affecting your business. If you aren't measuring customer satisfaction then start and then work your way back from there. Aren't we all looking for a true competitive advantage, it may be right in front of you.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Are you serious about your contact data?
There are all kinds of ways to get contact data but are you really serious about getting the best data or are you just looking for data so you can email or cold call? In today’s world just having data isn’t enough, today you have to do your homework and you need to know who it is that needs what you sell or who can influence the people that can buy what you provide.
It’s not about getting data; it’s about getting good data and then targeting those individuals so you hit a nerve with them. Bad data gives you bad results and at the same time wastes all the energy you put into it. Marketing has been conditioned to expect poor results from their campaigns and in today’s economy those expectations have gotten even lower. Sales people have been conditioned that most leads that come from marketing are worthless. This is primarily due to the use of traditional data sources that have been over used, the person receiving the email or phone call is preconditioned to delete prospecting emails or not return calls because of being overwhelmed by the quantity they receive from being in a database or on a list. Couple that with the large amount of data in these databases or on those lists that is incorrect, outdated or just plain wrong and you’re lucky to really connect with anyone.
When you combine these factors with the need to somehow connect with your prospect on some level instead of just blindly emailing or calling into a title, you start to see the complexity of the problem. I have heard it said that “Cold Calling is Dead” and that mass emailing no longer works and to some degree I have to agree. Cold calling without knowing something about your targeted prospect is a waste of time. You need something to connect you and this stranger so that they will listen to you. Whether it’s where they went to school, there past experience, hobbies, interest or whatever if you have taken the time to understand them and their business you are much more likely to get to talk to them or get a return email.
That is why general contact data, even if it’s correct, is not enough today but you also can’t spend all your time looking for that one piece of data that will connect you to the prospect. You need tools that can look in the right place for the right information for you so that when you review that data you have that little extra, that little tidbit that the others that are calling don’t have. You need tools that automatically look in all the places where that type of data resides and that bring it all together so all you have to do is review it and pick and choose what you need. You aren’t going find that in static list or databases, this type of information comes from dynamic sources like the Internet and it takes tools like those from Broadlook Technologies to get at it.
Like I said before, “Are you serious about your contact data or not?”
For more information contact Mike Pridavka at mpridavka@datasentials.com or (414) 406-8470 or visit our website at www.datasentials.com
It’s not about getting data; it’s about getting good data and then targeting those individuals so you hit a nerve with them. Bad data gives you bad results and at the same time wastes all the energy you put into it. Marketing has been conditioned to expect poor results from their campaigns and in today’s economy those expectations have gotten even lower. Sales people have been conditioned that most leads that come from marketing are worthless. This is primarily due to the use of traditional data sources that have been over used, the person receiving the email or phone call is preconditioned to delete prospecting emails or not return calls because of being overwhelmed by the quantity they receive from being in a database or on a list. Couple that with the large amount of data in these databases or on those lists that is incorrect, outdated or just plain wrong and you’re lucky to really connect with anyone.
When you combine these factors with the need to somehow connect with your prospect on some level instead of just blindly emailing or calling into a title, you start to see the complexity of the problem. I have heard it said that “Cold Calling is Dead” and that mass emailing no longer works and to some degree I have to agree. Cold calling without knowing something about your targeted prospect is a waste of time. You need something to connect you and this stranger so that they will listen to you. Whether it’s where they went to school, there past experience, hobbies, interest or whatever if you have taken the time to understand them and their business you are much more likely to get to talk to them or get a return email.
That is why general contact data, even if it’s correct, is not enough today but you also can’t spend all your time looking for that one piece of data that will connect you to the prospect. You need tools that can look in the right place for the right information for you so that when you review that data you have that little extra, that little tidbit that the others that are calling don’t have. You need tools that automatically look in all the places where that type of data resides and that bring it all together so all you have to do is review it and pick and choose what you need. You aren’t going find that in static list or databases, this type of information comes from dynamic sources like the Internet and it takes tools like those from Broadlook Technologies to get at it.
Like I said before, “Are you serious about your contact data or not?”
For more information contact Mike Pridavka at mpridavka@datasentials.com or (414) 406-8470 or visit our website at www.datasentials.com
Friday, January 8, 2010
It looks like efficiency really gets results!
I started doing some research after reading a Blog that I follow and in that Blog they were discussing how to increase revenue. I think we all think about this and discuss it on a regular basis. In this Blog the author discussed some information from a Harvard Business Review that he had read. I found the information interesting so I decided to find it and read if for myself.
The review is entitled The New Science of Sales Force Productivity by Dianne Ledingham, mark Kovac, and Heidi Locke Simon. In it they discuss “The data, tools and analytics that companies are increasingly using to improve their sales forces will not only help top reformers shine, but they will also help drive sales force laggards to the middle of the curve.”
Having run a number of sales forces in the past I was intrigued by this statement and what exactly it meant.
I’m all about efficiency and giving sales people what they need to do their job better. What I didn’t realize was how much that could really affect the bottom line.
In the past, like many out there, I’ve been told that we need to increase sales by a certain percentage and then we go through the exercise of spreading it out over territories and figuring out where we can add heads to get the desired results. What I never realized was that wasn’t the answer at all.
What the study shows is that you can increase your revenue much faster by building in efficiencies than you can by adding head count. It shows that you can increase your revenue 79% over a five year period with 21% less head count if you can increase efficiency only 8% annually. It shows how it is much cheaper and more effective it is to increase productivity as much as possible than it is to add headcount. This can be accomplished through targeted offerings, optimized automation, tools, and procedures; performance management and sales force deployment – and only after this would it make sense to add feet on the street.
In another study I read that most good sales reps spend 20 to 25% of their time researching their prospects on the Internet. If this is true and a good sales rep works 50 hours per week that would mean they spend 10 to 12.5 hours a week looking for information. I you could provide them a tool that would automate that process and cut their time by two thirds or so you could give them back 6 to 8 hour per week to spend contacting clients. This is at least a 12% increase in efficiency which should equate to over a 20% increase in revenue per year plus all the cost savings of not adding all those people. I don’t know any business that wouldn’t love to have that.
The review is entitled The New Science of Sales Force Productivity by Dianne Ledingham, mark Kovac, and Heidi Locke Simon. In it they discuss “The data, tools and analytics that companies are increasingly using to improve their sales forces will not only help top reformers shine, but they will also help drive sales force laggards to the middle of the curve.”
Having run a number of sales forces in the past I was intrigued by this statement and what exactly it meant.
I’m all about efficiency and giving sales people what they need to do their job better. What I didn’t realize was how much that could really affect the bottom line.
In the past, like many out there, I’ve been told that we need to increase sales by a certain percentage and then we go through the exercise of spreading it out over territories and figuring out where we can add heads to get the desired results. What I never realized was that wasn’t the answer at all.
What the study shows is that you can increase your revenue much faster by building in efficiencies than you can by adding head count. It shows that you can increase your revenue 79% over a five year period with 21% less head count if you can increase efficiency only 8% annually. It shows how it is much cheaper and more effective it is to increase productivity as much as possible than it is to add headcount. This can be accomplished through targeted offerings, optimized automation, tools, and procedures; performance management and sales force deployment – and only after this would it make sense to add feet on the street.
In another study I read that most good sales reps spend 20 to 25% of their time researching their prospects on the Internet. If this is true and a good sales rep works 50 hours per week that would mean they spend 10 to 12.5 hours a week looking for information. I you could provide them a tool that would automate that process and cut their time by two thirds or so you could give them back 6 to 8 hour per week to spend contacting clients. This is at least a 12% increase in efficiency which should equate to over a 20% increase in revenue per year plus all the cost savings of not adding all those people. I don’t know any business that wouldn’t love to have that.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Where can I find the business contact information I need?
Where is the most comprehensive, dynamic and up to date business information found? That’s right, on the Internet, be it company, business, personal or social the first place data gets updated is on the web. So, when you are looking for business information for sales and marketing prospecting where do you go?
Many people go to lists, traditional business information databases or online services where you can trade contact information. What’s wrong with that, well if you consider that the data in these places is very likely to be wrong, outdated or just not there because things change so fast in today’s business landscape that they just can’t keep up, I think you completely understand the problem.
So how do we get to that priceless information on the Internet? We can’t read every page of a company’s web site or sort through every search result that a search engine returns. We can’t sit and cut-copy-paste all day when we find a list of prospective companies we want to call on and there is no way to build a list from scratch based on how companies describe themselves on their web site.
But what if there were tools to automate the mining and capture of all this incredible data? What if we could tell these tools what we were looking for and they went out and automatically did all this for us? Could we now tap into this dynamic information that no list or database could ever provide?
Yes we can, the Broadlook suite of tools will mine the Internet to provide you the most up to date comprehensive company and contact information available. There is no lists, no databases, no data sharing, the tools just pull the information directly from the source where they find it on the Internet.
This is the new generation of business information tools for B2B prospecting. See them today at www.dtasentials.com/products/broadlook or contact us today for a complete demonstration.
www.datasentials.com/contact
Many people go to lists, traditional business information databases or online services where you can trade contact information. What’s wrong with that, well if you consider that the data in these places is very likely to be wrong, outdated or just not there because things change so fast in today’s business landscape that they just can’t keep up, I think you completely understand the problem.
So how do we get to that priceless information on the Internet? We can’t read every page of a company’s web site or sort through every search result that a search engine returns. We can’t sit and cut-copy-paste all day when we find a list of prospective companies we want to call on and there is no way to build a list from scratch based on how companies describe themselves on their web site.
But what if there were tools to automate the mining and capture of all this incredible data? What if we could tell these tools what we were looking for and they went out and automatically did all this for us? Could we now tap into this dynamic information that no list or database could ever provide?
Yes we can, the Broadlook suite of tools will mine the Internet to provide you the most up to date comprehensive company and contact information available. There is no lists, no databases, no data sharing, the tools just pull the information directly from the source where they find it on the Internet.
This is the new generation of business information tools for B2B prospecting. See them today at www.dtasentials.com/products/broadlook or contact us today for a complete demonstration.
www.datasentials.com/contact
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Reselling the best tools for your client
I was thinking today about what vendors I have always been closest to over the years and it dawned on me that it's always been the ones that somehow helped me make money. Those are the ones that were really out to help me and our relationship was built around a mutual trust that if we both helped each other we would both win. I think that clients today are looking for that even more. With the economy being what it is, businesses don’t have time or money to waste on things that don’t grow revenue or have a substantial return on investment.
At the same time vendors are looking for ways to reinvent themselves in their customer’s eyes so they can help solve their client’s next problem and build stronger relationships. This helps so that when the next project comes along they don’t have to fight for it with the rest of the completion.
If you are a CRM or ERP reseller you know that add-ons or additional modifications are sometimes hard to justify because of their ROI. What you really need is something that can make an immediate impact on your clients business and is easy to show results. You need something that the users will embrace because it makes their job easier, makes them more efficient and gives them more time to do their job. You, as a vendor, need something that will resonate through the entire organization and get you noticed as someone who is helping them make money.
I have been in sales and marketing for over 20 years and I have used all the traditional data sources you can think of to look up company and contact information. I have bought lists and I’ve tried the online tools that you can trade contact information on and I’ve used contact management packages, ERPs, CRMs, Outlook, you name it. What I have found is that it always comes down to the data. You can have the best CRM and still not be able to grow your business. Customers need them to run their businesses, to gain efficiencies, to establish process but when you get right down to it if the data that is in the system is bad or old or not what you need then you are going nowhere.
I have an opportunity for anyone that really cares about helping their client’s make money and really wants to build a closer relationship with them. The tools we have will save your clients time, give them better data up front and keep their data fresher. By mining the most dynamic data source in the world your clients will know who is in the role they need to talk to and who the people are that influence that persons decision. These tools will find titles, names, emails, phone numbers, bios and other relevant information that traditional sources don’t have. Let’s face it, we all know where the data is that we need, it’s on the Internet, because that’s where we all go to update our information now. Whether it’s on social, professional or job sites people update their online information faster and more frequently than anywhere else. Even companies now update their web site more frequently than any other form of collateral. This is the age we live in. The data that is available can turn cold calls into a warm calls just by finding that one little piece of information that helps make a connection.
So how do we take advantage of this? We use tools that read, scour and mine the information automatically so we don’t have to. We know that if we tried to sort through the Internet by hand that it could take hours, days, weeks or even months to go through all the information out there before we found what we needed. That’s why the only option is to automate the process. That’s what these tools do, they find the information you need, capture it and then incorporate it into your CRM or ERP data. Then going forward you can continually update your records so that your data is always fresh and complete. These tools will help your clients keep their data up to date and give them a competitive advantage that is guaranteed to grow their revenue.
Take a look at the Broadllok suite of tools and contact me about becoming a reseller. You will grow your business, help your clients and close additional business faster and easier than you ever have.
See us at www.datasentials.com or contact me at mpridavka@datasentials.com
At the same time vendors are looking for ways to reinvent themselves in their customer’s eyes so they can help solve their client’s next problem and build stronger relationships. This helps so that when the next project comes along they don’t have to fight for it with the rest of the completion.
If you are a CRM or ERP reseller you know that add-ons or additional modifications are sometimes hard to justify because of their ROI. What you really need is something that can make an immediate impact on your clients business and is easy to show results. You need something that the users will embrace because it makes their job easier, makes them more efficient and gives them more time to do their job. You, as a vendor, need something that will resonate through the entire organization and get you noticed as someone who is helping them make money.
I have been in sales and marketing for over 20 years and I have used all the traditional data sources you can think of to look up company and contact information. I have bought lists and I’ve tried the online tools that you can trade contact information on and I’ve used contact management packages, ERPs, CRMs, Outlook, you name it. What I have found is that it always comes down to the data. You can have the best CRM and still not be able to grow your business. Customers need them to run their businesses, to gain efficiencies, to establish process but when you get right down to it if the data that is in the system is bad or old or not what you need then you are going nowhere.
I have an opportunity for anyone that really cares about helping their client’s make money and really wants to build a closer relationship with them. The tools we have will save your clients time, give them better data up front and keep their data fresher. By mining the most dynamic data source in the world your clients will know who is in the role they need to talk to and who the people are that influence that persons decision. These tools will find titles, names, emails, phone numbers, bios and other relevant information that traditional sources don’t have. Let’s face it, we all know where the data is that we need, it’s on the Internet, because that’s where we all go to update our information now. Whether it’s on social, professional or job sites people update their online information faster and more frequently than anywhere else. Even companies now update their web site more frequently than any other form of collateral. This is the age we live in. The data that is available can turn cold calls into a warm calls just by finding that one little piece of information that helps make a connection.
So how do we take advantage of this? We use tools that read, scour and mine the information automatically so we don’t have to. We know that if we tried to sort through the Internet by hand that it could take hours, days, weeks or even months to go through all the information out there before we found what we needed. That’s why the only option is to automate the process. That’s what these tools do, they find the information you need, capture it and then incorporate it into your CRM or ERP data. Then going forward you can continually update your records so that your data is always fresh and complete. These tools will help your clients keep their data up to date and give them a competitive advantage that is guaranteed to grow their revenue.
Take a look at the Broadllok suite of tools and contact me about becoming a reseller. You will grow your business, help your clients and close additional business faster and easier than you ever have.
See us at www.datasentials.com or contact me at mpridavka@datasentials.com
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
How about a really cool tool for FREE
In today’s world who has the time to sit an cut-copy-paste all day to get the data you need into your contact manager. It’s bad enough that you have to find the information and then it’s even worse when you have to enter it by hand into your Outlook or CRM. I mean let’s face it by the time you do just one contact you’ve wasted ten minutes or so.
How about a tool that allows you to highlight the contact info, hit Control CC and then choose where you want to put it. Oh, and by the way, do it on your mobile device also. I know it sounds simple and really isn’t that the way it should be. If you are in sales you know what I mean, all day long you are collecting new contacts and the time you waste entering them or cut-copy-pasting them is time you are spending contacting the people you need to be talking to.
So here is what I have for you today, a tool called Contact Capture from Broadlook Technologies, that you can download for free that will save you an unbelievable amount of time whether you use it to grab one contact at a time or many. So go to my web site at www.datasentials.com/products/specialoffer and download it and let me know what you think. It’s not always about what you know; sometimes it’s the tools you use.
How about a tool that allows you to highlight the contact info, hit Control CC and then choose where you want to put it. Oh, and by the way, do it on your mobile device also. I know it sounds simple and really isn’t that the way it should be. If you are in sales you know what I mean, all day long you are collecting new contacts and the time you waste entering them or cut-copy-pasting them is time you are spending contacting the people you need to be talking to.
So here is what I have for you today, a tool called Contact Capture from Broadlook Technologies, that you can download for free that will save you an unbelievable amount of time whether you use it to grab one contact at a time or many. So go to my web site at www.datasentials.com/products/specialoffer and download it and let me know what you think. It’s not always about what you know; sometimes it’s the tools you use.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
What's the best way to find sales and marketing contact information?
I’ve been in sales and marketing for over twenty years now and I’ve used everything to try find information on the people I was targeting. Like many of you I found that most of the traditional data sources, like databases and lists have some good data but a large percentage of it was old, outdated and just wrong for what I was trying to do.
So just like you I turned to the Internet and with some success I started finding information here and there on the people I needed to talk to. What I quickly realized though was how much time I was spending looking for that data and how many time I came up completely empty handed. That’s when it hit me, there had to be a better way. There had to be someone or something out there that could help me find what I was looking for faster. The rest of this story changed everything for me not just how I look for company and contact data.
I met Donato Diorio from Broadlook Technologies in early 2002 and even though he was, at that time, focused on the recruiting industry I knew he had something that could help the B2B sale and marketing segment. Our paths crossed several times over the years and we bantered about B2B sales and marketing data but it wasn’t until 2007 while I was working on a very large business development project that I realized that the traditional tools used to find data on companies and contact were so bad. Shortly after that project ended I did some work for a startup where again I found myself looking for a better tool to find the data I needed, but this time it was worse because the companies we were targeting where not large enough to be in those traditional databases I’d used in the past. It just so happen that at that time I ran into Donato again and he told me I should take another look at his tools. He said that now they were much more effective for B2B contact searches. I did so and six months later Datasentials, my company, signed an agreement with Donato and Broadlook to represent and establish channels to bring their products to the B2B market.
The Broadlook suite of products is the most innovative set of tools I have come across in my 22 years of sales and marketing experience. I use them on a daily basis and can’t imagine how much time I have wasted over the years. These tools automate the data mining process of looking on the web for company and contact information. They are fast, effective and flexible allowing you to quickly find the information you need. In minutes you can find information that would take you hours, days or even weeks to compile by hand. Cut, Copy and Paste was a great invention but when you have to sort through hundreds or thousands of web pages and cut, copy, paste all day to get the data you need you figure out very quickly that it eats up a tremendous amount of your time. The Broadlook tools grab the data, put it into a friendly tabular format and then allow you to send it wherever you need to. I, like many of you, use Outlook as my contact manager and getting the data into Outlook couldn’t be easier.
If you have tried all the traditional sources and even some of the new ones on the web you understand the problems I faced while looking for the data I needed. You can find it but sometimes it’s old, sometimes it’s wrong and many times it’s spread all over in different places. Even if you find it how do you know it’s good and how do you get it into somewhere where you can use it. That’s where the Broadlook tolls really shine. First of all, is the data even out there on the web or not, I don’t spend hours looking for something that isn’t out there, the tools tell me in minutes. Second, how good and how fresh is the data? The Profiler product has a scoring process that tells you how reliable the data is, the higher the score the better the data source. I can even go directly to the page where it found the data to check for myself. Third, capturing the data and getting it into somewhere where I can use it without spending hours downloading or cut, copy and pasting. And finally, the flexibility of searching and getting what I want and not what I don’t need.
I’m not here to tell you that there is no work involved with using these tools but I here to tell you that the time you spend will produce tenfold to what you’ve done in the past. The better you get at using these tools the better your results continue to get. Like I said before, they are incredible tools and if you’re looking for the next generation of contact information research tools you really need to take a look at the Broadlook suite of products. You can see all the Broadlook tools at www.datasentials.com/products/broadlook
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
