A shorter path to prospects

Building pipeline is generally a salesperson’s least favorite activity. Either that or filling out fields in a CRM. But building pipeline is near the top of the “I don’t want to do this but have to do this” list. Given its an essential part of eventually getting paid, why do salespeople dislike spending their time on it?

The answer is because it’s a murky and generally unrewarding process. Finding someone who is willing to talk to you about a product service is hard in today’s environment. Email is largely full of noisy spam, phone calls are frequently screened to voicemail, and even when you make contact within an organization there are gatekeepers and others whose job it is to protect the time of decision makers. This is often such a laborious process that sales teams lean on marketing teams to take up the charge - “Go figure out who needs and wants our products and bring them to us!” - which leaves marketers scratching their heads just as much as salespeople.

This pain in prospecting often comes from not understanding who is actually in the market to buy your products. Sales and Marketing teams alike can list of who might need your product - but that does not a prospect list make. Far too many sellers can tell you that cold calling down a list of potential names is an exercise in frustration and wasted time. Marketers can send email campaign after email campaign with be forced to celebrate a 1-2% return rate.

There is a better way. Instead of spending your prospecting time on activities that spend large blocks of time trying to find prospects in a buying motion, use sales intelligence to do that work for you. The abundance of data in the market means that many times, data can help identify specific market triggers or prospect data points that can help identify which prospects are in a buying motion. Once a prospect is already in a buying motion, they are significantly more likely to take your call, answer your email, or follow up, because you are the solution they need for the problem that needs to be solved.

The data that can indicate buying motions can come from myriad places - it could be your own organizational data, it could be a public data source, it could be a proprietary database. Blending these together can help provide you intelligence on which prospect is either in or about to enter a buying motion. Turn your sales and marketing team loose on a list of buyers and you’ll shorten your path to revenue. Buyers in motion convert faster - which means a faster result for your company.