How much is your organization (over)spending on intelligence tools?
I’ve helped many colleagues with sales intelligence questions over the years. One of the most common questions that I encounter is, “What tools provide the best value?” It is a tricky question, because the sales intelligence space is getting crowded with providers that are trying to build single products into platform solutions – which means many providers are now offering a multitude of solutions that touch on different parts of the sales process. Of course, each platform promises to increase your revenue 3x or better, so how is an organization to choose?
The result of the intelligence platform trend is that organizations run the risk of purchasing the same capability more than once – even though the organization is often trying to solve for different needs. Here’s an example – in one of the roles Endeavour took on, the organization was buying prospect data from a multitude of sources. Each time the organization went into a new market, they looked for an intelligence tool that would provide insight into that specific market. The result was a mishmash of data sources – many of which were redundant once we stepped back and looked at the whole intelligence landscape. Not only did this create a budget issue, but it was also partially responsible for drowning the sales team in data which then was inhibiting actual selling. After some serious pruning, we cut more than a million dollars of contracts out of the intelligence space and ended up with cleaner and more usable prospect data than when we started.
Each new intelligence technology, be it conversational intelligence, data modeling, AI anything, prospect mining tools, outreach automation or anything else that pops up, deserves a hard examination before being added to the tech stack. Despite increasing spend on intelligence technologies each year, companies often do not have a clear vision of how that technology will add true value to their go-to-market motions. In theory, yes, everyone wants technology to be the “silver bullet” for achieving sales growth – but many times, its not a new technology you need. The solution is to simply put your current tech stack to work – and engage your sales intelligence team to get the most out of it.
Even in the golden age of SaaS for every conceivable sales need, B2B organizations will need human interpretation to drive their most valuable insights and efficiency. Leverage your sales intelligence team – or the folks close to that role in your organization – to make sure that your intelligence spend is truly aligned with your organizational goals and needs. After all, a dollar not spent on shiny new (redundant) technology might mean a slightly smaller sales target during the next planning season.