Sales reps want to spend as much time as possible in front of prospects and clients. The easiest way to increase this face time is to decrease the amount of time they have to spend doing other activities. Some of the activities that take place outside of client meetings can be tied in a positive way to ROI, such as research that occurs prior to these all-important face to face meetings. If we can find ways to make time spent in these activities more effective (and possibly take less time), we can show direct increases in ROI over time.
One new feature in the Salesforce Summer 15 release does just this, and gives us some insight into the direction sales research is going on the platform.
Data.com Prospect Insights
The value of Data.com has previously been in cleaning data, finding prospects and most recently blocking duplicate record entry. This is all setting the foundation for the next level of prospecting, where the platform will bring the most relevant sales data to reps when they need it most. The first step in this is Prospect Insights, a new feature you will find in your Data.com orgs this summer.
Prospecting Insights will provide industry and company-specific intelligence to reps as they call on prospects and customers. A company’s business, financial and industry details will all be available directly on their Sales Cloud records, and they are being presented in quick-to-comprehend visuals so reps can scan them quickly.
Note: Prospecting Insights are only available for records imported from or cleaned by Data.com
If these insights into customers and their industry aren’t enough, Data.com also provides a list of sample questions for companies in that industry. Tailoring these sample questions with the information provided in the company-specific insights can give sales reps an advantage over their competitors. This can prove effective for inside or outside sales, in high volume or long sales cycle environments.
