Although we may be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel for the global pandemic, it’s also pretty clear that the enterprise sales process will never be the same. While we all pivoted quickly to zoom and virtual events in 2020, the “new normal” will require a wholesale review of how we connect with clients and prospects, so that we can return to real front-footed sales growth in 2021.
The good news is that there is a huge untapped opportunity to leverage “digital signals,” the data created when clients and prospects engage with your company’s digital touchpoints. Most sales teams get access to just the basics – “contact us” form filler and maybe email clickers – but there are a ton of digital signals that can be just as valuable: social media interactions, chat engagements, ad engagement, browsers on your website, and even people browsing relevant topics on other sites.
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Harnessing all of those signals may sound daunting, but here are 5 tips to help you drive the most value from the data you already have:
1) Integrate the Data:
The first critical step is to get all of those signals into one unified view. The data from all of your company’s touchpoints most likely live-in different tools – your sales CRM, your email platform, Google, LinkedIn, your chat provider and so on. To make the data actionable, you need to start by getting it all into one place.
2) Map the Data:
It’s not enough to gather the data into one place, if it’s still disjointed and siloed, so the next critical step is to map all of that data across accounts and business topics. This will enable you to see which accounts are engaging with which topics, so you can prioritize your outreach and craft your content.
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3) Apply Intelligence:
You can improve your outreaches even further, by connecting the dots between digital engagements, topics…and actual closed opportunities. Which kinds of engagements and which specific topics were highest correlated with actual wins? You can run these analyses by hand or even better taking advantage of a Machine Learning partner to analyze your well-prepared data set.
4) Make It Usable.
The best data still has little impact if it’s difficult to use. Here are a few options to get you started: Good: Circulate a daily or weekly snapshot of the highest intent accounts listing the contact, touchpoint, topics and responsible salesperson. Better: Create a dashboard that sales team members can log into to pick up their Leads on their own. Best: Integrate your new data set into tools that are already in use, like your sales CRM or a sales enablement platform.
5) Gather Feedback.
Chances are your sales team has thought a lot about what would make their lives easier and help them succeed. Make sure to solicit their feedback from right within the tools and dashboards they are using (e.g., a comment box, email link or Slack channel) to make it as easy as possible to share their ideas.
With traditional client and prospect engagement opportunities reduced to a trickle, 2021 will be the year enterprise sellers need to really start embracing “digital signals” more than ever before. Most sales teams are seeing just a tiny fraction of the signals available, but with a handful of proactive steps, you can open up the aperture, make the data actionable, and turbo-charge your outreach.
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