You think you know, but you have no idea. As a salesperson, you probably spend a lot of time researching prospects and getting prospect intel on their purchasing decisions. You may have even paid a company to do a massive demographics run on your current and past customers. When it comes to your "target audience," you couldn't be more honed. Or could you? Lead intelligence is a crucial, but often a missing element in a sales cycle.
Sales managers and their teams spend hours trying to learn more about how their prospects buy, but the truth is that most of this intel is pure speculation. When we're talking lead intelligence, we want to know down to the click how an ideal customer is behaving. You can do this one of two ways: hide in their office and watch as they navigate your website, or get an analytics software that can give you some serious intel. Of the two options, the software is a little more feasible. But what exactly do you want to know about your ideal prospect? Let's explore in more detail.
How they found you.
You might say to yourself, "Our receptionist asks every single time she answers the phone and encounters a new prospect how people find us." Odds are your receptionist isn't asking for the exact search phrase, banner ad, PPC ad or other social media platform they were using when they actually found you, nor what page they landed on and exactly when they did this. A prospect might be a little weirded out with 20 questions the moment they call. By understanding exactly how your prospect found you, your marketing team can gain insight into which efforts are working and spend even more time focusing those efforts. If your company invests heavily in marketing, this is information that is absolutely critical to the success of that marketing.
What made them reach out?
As you probably know from years of experience in sales, prospects don't just reach out to buy. There's a massive learning curve when it comes to your products and services. Prospects need to be carefully nurtured, educated and given multiple opportunities. They have to feel great about choosing you, and their final decision involves some pretty in depth research. In regard to lead intelligence, you need to know if it was the free sample, the one-time promotion, or that industry case study that pushed them over the edge. By gaining understanding of which actions are turning your prospects to leads and leads to customers, you can better determine who your ideal buyer is, better understand your sales cycle and avoid unnecessary steps in the process.
How they're interacting with your correspondence.
It might seem a little creepy, but it's time to move beyond the read receipt. There is nothing more annoying than a read receipt on a completely cold or salesy e-mail. But you need to know more, right? You're definitely not happy logging into the company newsletter platform and seeing if they clicked on some links. You need to know exactly whom the best point of contact is within that organization and what they think of your organization. If they're not opening your e-mails, opening them and not clicking or clicking multiple resources and actively engaging with the attachments and proposals you're sending. Having intelligence like this completely breaks down the confusion and frustration that often results in prospects falling through the cracks.
You're not a psychic. It's practically impossible to get all this insight on your own. In order to run a really successful sales and marketing partnership, this is the type of lead intelligence that you really need. You can look at demographics all day long, but the odds are you don't know exactly what you need to know in order to hone your marketing efforts and shorten your sales cycle. A little insight goes a long way. It's time to unwrap your sales and marketing initiatives and put them under the microscope. Marketing and sales can work together seamlessly with a little communication and analytics. Get the most from your marketing and make your executive team really, really happy by uncovering your ideal prospects with marketing analytics.