The Ultimate B2B Guide On Sales Intelligence (Key Data Points, Sources & More)
Discover the power of sales intelligence to boost your sales game! Uncover valuable insights and close deals faster.
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Understanding your customers is the foundation of effective selling. Do you ever feel like you’re missing something when trying to seal the deal? Maybe you score a meeting with a promising lead, but something feels off as you do your prep work. You look them up online and find some interesting details, but they don’t tell the whole story. What you’re looking for is sales intelligence: data and insights about your prospects and their companies that can help you personalize your sales approach. Sales intelligence tools can even help you uncover hidden connections between your existing customers and your prospects to help you uncover leads and tailor your sales approach.
This blog will cover the ins and outs of sales intelligence and its tools to help you achieve your goals. Aomni's sales intelligence software can help you reach your objectives faster. Our solution organizes and analyzes business data to give you actionable insights to help you close deals faster.
What Is Sales Intelligence?
Sales intelligence refers to the usage and application of data, analytics, metrics, and insights to enhance:
- Sales processes
- Strategies
It may include information about markets, prospects, and existing customers. The ultimate goal is to turn raw data into actionable insights so sales reps can close more deals. Sales intelligence can:
- Predict customer behavior
- Identify emerging market trends
- Suggest the best following action for sales reps
Data Analysis
With technological advancements not showing any signs of slowing down, more sophisticated sales tools becoming available, artificial intelligence becoming more prominent, and CRM systems such as Salesforce CRM Analytics and other software becoming more prevalent, the ability to store and analyze massive amounts of data is becoming easier and easier. Sales Intelligence allows you to sift through this data wherever it is.
How Big Is the Sales Intelligence Market?
The sales intelligence market size was valued at USD 3.99 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow from USD 4.39 billion in 2024 to USD 10.25 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 11.2%.
Benefits Of Sales Intelligence
Sales software is constantly updating, giving you fresh insights into your:
- Customers
- Sales
- Trends
- Market conditions
This data comes from various sources, including first-party and third-party data, to create comprehensive profiles.
SI Benefits
One study showed that bad data can end up wasting 27.3% of a sales reps time and end up costing the business $20,000 annually. That’s where sales intelligence comes in. With sales intelligence (SI), you can personalize communication as soon as possible to show potential customers you can fulfill their needs. It also lets you:
- Uncover growth opportunities
- Expedite deal closures
- Cater to buyer expectations
Speed Up Prospecting
Sales data and intelligence make it easy to:
- Identify your best customers
- Create lookalike profiles
- Target customers based on intent and behaviors
This can significantly streamline the prospecting phase, preventing you from wasting time on cold leads. Streamlined prospecting leads to:
- Revenue growth
- Achievable quotas
Visualize Your Data
Sales intelligence tools often include features such as:
- Lead management
- Data visualization
These features can help sales teams:
- Track their progress
- Understand their customers
- Make better decisions
Automate Hands-On Tasks
Sales intelligence can also help organizations save time and money by automating tasks, such as:
- Generating reports
- Analyzing data
This lets salespeople focus on selling and closing deals.
Intelligence Software for Free
Aomni is an artificial intelligence agent platform for B2B sales intelligence software. Our solution empowers enterprise and strategic account executives to execute account-based sales and marketing strategies with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness.
Helping Your Sales Team
The key features of Aomni include:
- AI-powered prospect and account research
- Comprehensive account mapping and planning
- Data-driven sales strategy development
- Automated call preparation
- Personalized AI agents for sales optimization
- An AI chat interface for streamlined sales processes
- An AI-assisted account-based sales
- Marketing campaign execution tool
Addressing Pain Points
Aomni addresses critical pain points for sales managers whose account executives, account managers, and customer success managers are:
- Underperforming
- Missing quotas.
By leveraging our advanced AI technology, sales professionals can significantly enhance their preparation for customer conversations, leading to larger deal closures and increased promotion opportunities.
Solution for Individual Sales Professionals
For individual sales professionals, Aomni provides the tools and insights needed to:
- Elevate their performance
- Close more substantial deals
- Accelerate career progression
Transforming B2B Sales Operations
Our platform transforms how B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction fully prepared and strategically positioned for success. Try our sales intelligence software for free today!
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What Is The Difference Between CRM And Sales Intelligence?
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and sales intelligence both play essential roles in helping businesses manage and grow customer relationships, but they’re pretty different in terms of their:
- Focus
- Functionality
Think of CRM as your digital filing system for customer data. It stores all your interactions, from emails and call notes to customer preferences, allowing you to keep track of every touchpoint in the customer journey. CRM tools help you:
- Manage existing relationships
- Nurture leads
- Stay organized
SI vs. CRM
Your CRM is the go-to if you remember who I talked to last week and what we discussed. On the other hand, sales intelligence takes things a step further by providing actionable insights. Instead of just holding information, sales intelligence tools analyze external data sources (like industry trends, competitor activity, or financial news) to offer you real-time insights. This allows you to:
- Better understand your customers
- Anticipate their needs
- Identify new opportunities
Predictive Insights
It’s like having a crystal ball that tells you when to reach out, what your customer might want next, and whether a company is growing or struggling, which can help you adjust your approach.
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How Does Sales Intelligence Work With CRMs?
Sales intelligence maximizes the value of your CRM data. Contact and account data in your CRM decays quickly as buyers change companies and roles and businesses get acquired or branch out to other regions.
To keep it usable, you must keep it up-to-date. By regularly enriching the contact data you've collected and filling in the gaps in your CRM records, you ensure the sales process is efficient and reps don't waste time on chasing dead leads.
CRM Integration
When choosing a sales intelligence solution, ensure it integrates with your CRM. You shouldn’t need to manually synchronise the two programs; your sales intelligence may work as a plug-in inside your CRM without switching windows.
6 Key Data Points Of Sales Intelligence
1. Contact Details: The Foundation of Sales Intelligence
Accurate contact details are essential for connecting with leads across various marketing touchpoints. This information changes over time as leads get promoted or shift jobs. Intelligent sales platforms can update contact information in real-time, so you can effectively target and reach your audience.
2. Demographics: Get to Know Your Target Audience
Demographics provide crucial data on your target audience. Critical demographic information includes:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Income
- Education
- Occupation
From a company standpoint, demographics include location, size, industry, and years in business. The more you know about your target audience, the better you can personalize outreach and improve your sales forecasts.
3. Company Data: Understand Your Target Accounts
Firmographic data is crucial for allocating your sales resources effectively. Company data helps you understand the organizations you’re targeting by providing insights into their:
- Industry
- Position
- Sales revenue
- Number of employees
Having enough information about your target accounts helps you forecast more accurately. As a result, you can craft more effective strategies and move in the right direction.
4. Purchase Habits: Predict Buyer Behavior
Someone’s online purchase habits tell you a lot about their preferences. Tracking purchase history lets you offer personalized recommendations to your target audience.
If someone buys a pair of running shoes, you can recommend a related running apparel. Purchase history lets you predict behavior patterns and make accurate sales forecasts.
5. Intent Data: Focus on Your Target Audience's Goals
In marketing and sales, the target audience's intent matters a lot. It tells you where your target customer is in their journey. For example, they might be consuming helpful content around your product. In that case, pitching your product as a viable solution isn’t the best strategy.
Instead, sales reps should only pitch when a target customer is likely to make the purchase. It's also important to ensure you slide into their DMs before the competitor. Use a reliable revenue intelligence platform to gather intent data and inform your outreach.
6. Technographic Data: Leverage Insights About Technology
Technographic intelligence involves finding the technology your target audience is using, such as their:
- Hardware
- Software
This may also offer details about when the company or prospect purchased specific technologies.
Technographic Benefits
When paired with an effective sales strategy, technographic intelligence can help you boost your conversions. The benefits of technographic data include:
- Improved segmentation
- More specificity
- Effective lead prioritization
- Sales event triggers
Event Triggers
Sales event triggers are important data points to track since they tell you there’s a conversion opportunity. A buyer intent signal allows you to convert a specific lead on time. Having this type of data helps businesses make profitable sales decisions and stay ahead of rivals.
Where Does Sales Intelligence Data Come From?
Sales intelligence gathers information from many sources to help businesses make smart sales decisions. Recent studies show that companies use data from inside and outside sources to better understand their markets.
Internal Data Sources
Sales Intelligence is about more than just collecting data on buyers and their organizations. It also involves analyzing internal sales data better to understand existing customers and their relationship to similar prospects. Internal sales data can be found in:
- CRM systems
- Marketing automation platforms
- Sales rep activities
CRM Systems
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are a primary source of sales data, containing:
- Information about leads
- Contacts
- Accounts
- Opportunities
- Interactions
Marketing Automation Platforms
Marketing automation tools track:
- Customer engagement
- Email interactions
- Website visits
- Other marketing activities
Sales Rep Activities
Data collected from sales representatives’ activities, such as:
- Emails
- Calls
- Meetings
- Notes, offer insights into customer interactions and sales progress
External Data Sources
Sales intelligence also leverages a wealth of external data. This can help sales organizations uncover valuable insights about their prospects and the market as a whole. External sales intelligence data can come from:
Website Analytics
Tools like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics capture data about website visitors, including:
- Traffic sources
- Page views
- Bounce rates
- Conversion rates
Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms offer insights into:
- Customer demographics
- Interests
- Behaviors, as well as interactions with your brand, allowing for targeted marketing
Third-party Data Providers
Additional data, such as firmographics, technographics, or intent data, are acquired from external providers.
Market Research Reports
External market research reports provide information about industry trends, market size, competitive landscape, and customer preferences.
Publicly Available Data
Data from sources like government databases, industry publications, or news articles provide insights into:
- Regulatory changes
- Competitor activities
What Are Sales Intelligence Tools?
To increase revenue, sales intelligence tools help sales teams better understand their target markets and potential customers. Sales intelligence provides insights into:
- Market trends
- Competitor trends
- Growth opportunities
It combines data from both internal and external sources to create actionable insights that can be used to formulate effective sales strategies and identify promising new leads.
Aomni Sales Intelligence Solution
Sales intelligence solutions like Aomni typically provide users wit the following:
- Access to real-time analytics
- Predictive insights
- Automated lead scoring capabilities
- Customer segmentation capabilities
- Comprehensive account profiles
- Intuitive visualization tools
- Interactive dashboards
- AI-powered recommendations
- Advanced collaboration tools
- Automated email marketing campaigns
These features help sales teams make better decisions faster while also providing actionable insights that can be used to prioritize activities based on risk/reward or future projections. As a result, sales intelligence can become an invaluable asset for organizations looking to improve the ROI of their sales efforts.
How To Leverage B2B Sales Intelligence Data?
No B2B company can succeed by being all things to everyone. Companies must begin by targeting a narrow niche and dominating that space until they can use it as a base to expand. Sales and marketing teams should work together to create an ideal customer profile, leveraging sales intelligence data to make it work.
A sales intelligence database can help you analyze your current customer base and find companies and individuals who fit your ICP.
Targeted Outreach
If you're targeting HR executives in EMEA-based companies with fewer than 50 people, use sales intelligence to create an accurate email list of HR managers and directors that fit the bill. Your marketing team will be able to warm them up with relevant, personalized content.
Keep Your Customer Data Fresh with Sales Intelligence
The more you know about a prospect, the easier it is to sell to them. Detailed information can help you find the right angle to craft a message that resonates with their pain points. It's difficult to manually update CRM records with complete and accurate data.
B2B is constantly changing. People get new jobs, and companies merge and change ownership. Some sales intelligence platforms offer data enrichment functionality that ensures your existing sales data and new data that flows into your systems are fresh, so you save time on talking to dead leads.
Enhanced Efficiency
It means no more duplications, better organization and less time spent on manual, repetitive tasks. You can automatically refresh existing data by integrating sales intelligence into your CRM. It also gives you a new dimension of information, including financial insights, such as:
- Funding rounds
- Company news
Your sales team can grab new opportunities to get in contact and sell.
Score Your Leads to Identify Your Best Prospects
Once you’re at the stage where you’re engaging with your prospects with personalized content, sales intelligence can help you determine who is genuinely interested and who has you on ignore. You can monitor relevant sales event triggers and gauge their buying intent by the content they consume online.
Lead Scoring
If your main sales strategy is cold calling, you can score leads based on the availability of other contact details, such as verified mobile numbers.
Then, assign each prospect a score, indicating who your salespeople should contact first. Having this kind of data intelligence at your fingertips takes the guesswork out of the sales process.
Qualify Your Leads with Sales Intelligence
Once your leads are sufficiently warmed up, it’s time for the sales team to take control- with sales intelligence to help them. Your SDR's first task is to:
- Call the prospect
- Begin the conversation
- Qualify them for or outside of the process
Accurate Targeting
Real-time sales intelligence ensures they have the correct contact data, so they’re not wasting their time trying to reach prospects who have long since moved on. Sales intelligence discovered these prospects when working with the ICP, and salespeople know they’re calling similar prospects who face similar challenges.
It’s suddenly easier for salespeople to get their messaging right and truly position your product as the answer to your prospects’ pain.
Speed Up Your Sales Cycle with Sales Intelligence
Sales intelligence gives you everything you need to make fewer calls, contact the most relevant people, and hit quota faster. Accurate contract details allow your team to skip gatekeepers and reach straight to decision-makers because you give them all the knowledge they need before engaging with customers.
It's essential if you're selling to enterprise clients and your deals require a sign-off from multiple stakeholders. The more intelligence you gather about them, the faster you can start multithreading.
Make Sales More Predictable with Sales Intelligence
Sales intelligence insights also make prospecting more predictable. Successful sales teams plan for the future and allocate their resources to maximize revenue. Sales intelligence data is an integral part of this, but it is not a nice-to-have solution.
By giving sales leaders the ability to forecast more accurately, formulate more effective strategies and drive more growth, sales intelligence excels in helping sales leaders better understand their prospects and customers, who they are, and how and why they buy. It provides the data that allows sales leaders to shorten the sales cycle and close more deals.
How To Evaluate Sales Intelligence Providers & Tools?
When evaluating sales intelligence tools, data accuracy and coverage are crucial. You want to choose a tool that provides verified and up-to-date information. Otherwise, your team could save valuable time and resources acting on outdated or incorrect data.
Along with accuracy, data coverage matters too. Check if the tool covers various industries, regions, and company sizes to ensure you can target the right prospects and get relevant insights into your market.
User-Friendliness: Tools That Don’t Require a Degree to Operate
A tool is only as good as how easily your team can use it. The usability of the software is crucial
because it needs to be quickly adopted across your business. Look for platforms with user-friendly interfaces that don’t require a lot of training but still pack powerful features.
Integration Capabilities: Avoiding Data Silos
Your sales intelligence software should work seamlessly with your current tech stack. If it doesn't integrate well with your CRM, marketing tools, or other systems, you risk creating data silos that complicate your workflows. Ensure that the platform integrates smoothly to avoid unnecessary hurdles.
Customization: One Size Doesn’t Fit All
One size doesn’t fit all, so customizability is key. Look for sales intelligence software that can be tailored to your business needs.
Whether it’s customizable dashboards or specific filters for data, these features help you maximize the value you get from the tool.
Real-Time Updates: Quick Response to Market Changes
Sales data becomes less useful if it’s outdated. The best tools provide real-time updates, allowing you to make informed decisions and respond quickly to market changes. Automated processes are beneficial for ensuring your data stays fresh.
Compliance: Avoiding Legal Complications
In today’s data-driven world, compliance with regulations like GDPR or CCPA is non-negotiable. The software you choose must prioritize data privacy to keep you on the right side of the law. Make sure the tool aligns with applicable regulations to avoid legal complications.
Scalability: Growing with Your Business
As your business grows, your tools need to grow with you. Check if the sales intelligence platform is scalable with flexible pricing structures that adjust as your data and user needs increase.
Support and Training: Onboarding Resources Matter
Good support can make or break your experience with any software. Look for platforms that offer comprehensive:
- Training resources
This ensures your team can onboard smoothly and fully utilize the platform’s features.
Reporting and Analytics: Tracking Data and Performance
Sales intelligence tools should go beyond just collecting data; they need to offer:
- Advanced reporting
- Analytics
This lets you track your team’s performance, optimize sales cycles, and make data-driven decisions to improve overall strategy.
Lead Scoring: Automated Processes for Efficiency
Automated lead scoring is a game-changer for prioritizing high-value prospects. Choose a tool that allows you to customize lead-scoring rules based on your ideal customer profile (ICP) so your sales team can focus on the best opportunities.
Export Options: Flexibility Is Key
Another important feature is flexibility in data export. Whether exporting data to a CRM, marketing platform, or other system, the tool should offer versatile options to ensure seamless integration with other applications.
Cost and ROI: Budgeting for Sales Intelligence
Cost is a crucial factor. Ensure the software provides a clear, affordable pricing model that aligns with your budget. Beyond the upfront costs, consider additional data access fees or extra user licenses to calculate your long-term ROI.
Free Trials and Demos: Testing Before Committing
Whenever possible, opt for tools that offer a free trial or demo. This gives you the chance to test out the:
- Software’s features
- User interface
- Data quality before making a financial commitment
Use this period to ensure it meets your business needs.
Try Our Sales Intelligence Software for Free Today
Aomni is an artificial intelligence agent platform for B2B sales intelligence software. Our solution empowers enterprise and strategic account executives to execute account-based sales and marketing strategies with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness.
Helping Sales Teams
The key features of Aomni include:
- AI-powered prospect and account research
- Comprehensive account mapping and planning
- Data-driven sales strategy development
- Automated call preparation
- Personalized AI agents for sales optimization
- An AI chat interface for streamlined sales processes
- An AI-assisted account-based sales
- Marketing campaign execution tool
Aomni Addressing Pain Points
Aomni addresses critical pain points for sales managers whose account executives, account managers, and customer success managers are:
- Underperforming
- Missing quotas.
By leveraging our advanced AI technology, sales professionals can significantly enhance their preparation for customer conversations, leading to larger deal closures and increased promotion opportunities.
Providing Tools and Insights
For individual sales professionals, Aomni provides the tools and insights needed to:
- Elevate their performance
- Close more substantial deals
- Accelerate career progression
For B2B Sales Transformation
Our platform transforms how B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction fully prepared and strategically positioned for success. Try our sales intelligence software for free today!
Aomni for Sales Teams and Sales Managers
Aomni significantly enhances the performance of sales teams and sales managers. The platform improves individual sales performance, helping teams achieve their targets.
Aomni also gives sales managers a clearer view of team performance and better tools to coach underperforming reps.
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