Sales is the monetary measure for businesses to determine how well their products and services are performing. However, in today’s competitive markets where there are an abundance of opportunity and businesses, it may be more difficult for clients to discover certain services that would add value to their lives.
Sales intelligence software helps businesses (and clients) achieve exactly that, linking prospects with companies and providing companies with valuable data so they can optimise their sales and marketing strategies.
What is Sales Intelligence Software?
Sales intelligence software helps businesses improve their sales processes by giving them access to internal and external data. This allows them to improve both the quality and quantity of sales.
Crucially, it allows them to identify new opportunities and equips sales people with information that can help them close valuable leads. In addition, it can help marketing teams strategise and communicate with the correct target market.
What Does Sales Intelligence Do?
Sales Intelligence combines information from internal and external sources to gain insights into consumer and customer behaviour, the market trends, competitor trends, and opportunities that could result in growth.
Using this data, sales intelligence software can create actionable insights that can translate into improved sales and marketing strategies to identify promising leads.
In order to be classified as Sales Intelligence, a solution needs to meet the following criteria:
- Provide information and insights about prospects – these, in turn, can be combined with business data.
- Include functions which help companies identify potential customers based on certain criteria.
- Integration with sales and marketing software as well as with business intelligence, data management or analytics solutions.
Best Sales Intelligence Solutions
1. HubSpot
HubSpot Sales Hub is known as one of the most user-friendly sales intelligence software programs. Not only does it include advanced insights and sales analytics, it also includes sales engagement tools and configure-price-quote functionality. This in turn leads to richer insights and more valuable leads to maximise sales potentials.
Some of the key features of HubSpot include:
- Opportunity and Pipeline Management
- Lead Management
- Task And Activity Management
- Reports
2. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is known in the world of sales intelligence as having some of the most sophisticated technology combined with one of the most comprehensive business databases. The result is a full picture of customers, prospects and opportunities for sales allowing for sales and marketing teams access to more prospective clients and the opportunity to close more leads. ZoomInfo aims to increase sales productivity and cover lead scoring, sales prospecting, territory planning, and targeted outreach.
Some of ZoomInfo’s key features include:
- Data Segmentation / Filtering
- Advanced Search
- Lead Builder
- Integration to CRM / Marketing Automation
3. InsideView
InsideView offers insights into new markets, target audiences and prospective buyers, all in a mission to drive businesses and maximise sales potential. A B2B platform, the technology relies on artificial intelligence in order to provide the most reliable and up-to-date or data. With this, it offers sales teams the most relevant and accurate buyer signals.
Main features of InsideView include:
- Inbound Revenue Acceleration
- Tools to find accounts and strategies to intelligently engage
- Diagnosis of data health
- Tech Profiler
- Highly customised prospect lists
- Outbound Revenue Acceleration
- Sales Effectiveness
4. Groove
Groove is one of the leading sales engagement platforms, especially for those integrating with Salesforce. Designed for all stages of the sales lifecycle, Groove automates non-sales activities in order for sales teams to focus on valuable leads and generative revenue. Fully customisable, Groove can be set up to harness the most accurate sales reporting and forecasting. Additionally, the software is known as one of the leading companies for highest customer satisfaction.
Key features of Groove include:
- Email Platform Integration & Categorisation
- Task Management
- CRM Integration
5. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
This feature of LinkedIn is specifically designed for salespeople, allowing them to easily access relevant contacts. Providing access to the largest network of professionals (more than 500 million members), there is a wealth of information that this tool is able to provide. The LinkedIn Sales Navigator allows you to hone in on relevant individuals and companies and connect you with new prospects.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator enables sales professionals to:
- Send 30 InMails monthly
- Save up to 5,000 prospects
- Reach a large audience of connections
- Integrate with Salesforce or Dynamic account
- Access regular reports in order to assess sales performance
6. Cognism
Cognism allows businesses to reach their ideal clients through verified phone numbers, direct dial and business emails. Cognism also allows you to access high quality B2B data that is GDPR compliant and follows strict protocols for privacy. Cognism is also capable of CRM integration with a variety of platforms, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Dynamics, and sales engagement tools like Outreach and SalesLoft.
Main features of InsideView include:
- Identify and outreach ready-to-buy accounts
- Packages include contact and company data, technographics, and sales trigger events.
- Unrestricted views with individual and page-level exporting
7. Datanyze
Datanyze provides users with prospect contact information so that they can be reached with more ease. The platform is credit based, and there are a certain amount of credits allocated for each plan. These allow users to see contact information of prospects on LinkedIn.
Key features of Datanyze include:
- Lead generation
- Enriched data
- Conversation starting icebreakers
8. Kaspr
Kaspr is a sales intelligence chrome extension that allows users to generate leads on LinkedIn. It also allows users to manage their pipeline via LinkedIn. The platform’s database extends globally.
Key features of Kaspr include:
- Lead generation and pipeline management
- CRM integration capabilities
- User friendly platform that is easy to use
9. Seamless AI
Seamless AI gives users access to a large database of prospects, and it uses its AI algorithm to prioritise leads based on the likelihood of them being converted into customers. The platform has a verified business and contact information database.
The key features of Seamless AI include:
- Search functionality
- A chrome extension
- An easy to use user interface
10. Leedfeeder
Leedfeeder allows users to identify the users and companies that visit their website. The platform can be integrated with Google Analytics to display data, such as the companies that visit different pages of their website and how long they’ve been on the page for.
The top features of Leedfeeder include:
- Contact management
- Sales forecasting
- Workflow automation
- Leeds and opportunity management
What Does Sales Intelligence Software Include?
Sales intelligence tools offer sales teams a range of useful insights without the need for manual data extraction and analysis. The majority of Sales Intelligence software includes the following tools:
CRM Integration and Overlap
Sales intelligence software often overlaps with existing CRM, especially if it involves the storage of contacts. However, sales intelligence solutions often offer more specific solutions than classic CRM.
For example, sales intelligence solutions can assist sales professionals at each stage of the sales pipeline, enabling team members to segment prospective customers and target them at the most opportune moment.
Another factor that sales intelligence solutions can offer is the ability provide detailed top-down contact information of a target customer so that teams can ensure they are contacting the right groups of people.
Through this type of software, you are often able to integrate with CRM software in order to make direct edits to data records and provide further context for contact profiles. This gives sales teams a more complete picture about the sales pipeline for different customers.
Technology Prospecting
Often, sales intelligence programs feature tools which allows sales professionals information about the software used by prospect companies. With this, it is possible to download lead lists of all the contact information of prospects that sue the specific software. This can help teams identify when certain companies stop using specific software and potentially flag prospective B2B clients.
Data Cleaning
A lot of sales intelligence programs will include data cleansing features. These help eliminate the time-consuming process of eliminating or consolidating contact records.
Rather than manually having to delete duplicated records, update poorly formatted data or correcting inaccurate records, sales intelligence software can help do this automatically so that data remains up to date and accurate.
Social Media Integration
With certain plugins or browser extensions, many sales intelligence tools are able to import social media data and integrate this information either as a completely new list of sales leads or onto existing prospect records. This can help sales professionals gain access to tailored lists and target particular segments of the market.
Do I Need Sales Intelligence Software?
There are many benefits of sales intelligence software that could help your company to maximise sales and generate leads.
- Identify contacts quickly and accurately
- Maximise cold-calling approach by automising data
- Increase sales by increasing automation and data accuracy
- Gain specific insights about competitors including behaviour of prospective clients
- Improve sales prospects by targeting prospective clients when there is more purchasing potential
How Much Does Sales Intelligence Software Cost?
The cost of sales intelligence software will depend on the platform and which plan or package you choose. For example, more professional plans with more complex features will be more expensive. For more basic or limited plans, pricing is far lower.
More well known names such as ZoomInfo can cost around $10,000 annually. Other companies, such as UpLead have plans starting at around $99 monthly, for the most basic plan. InsideView Enterprise also has plans starting at around $99 per month, per user. This type of software is usually based on a subscription plan model.
Who is Sales Intelligence Software For?
Sales intelligence software can benefit companies across departments helping the company as a whole to boost sales.
Sales Teams
The part of the company who can best put this type of software to good use is the sales team. With these tools, sales professionals are able to create lists of prospective clients and gain the most accurate prospect information in order to tailor their sales approach and maximise success.
Marketing Teams
Marketing teams typically work alongside sales teams and can use sales intelligence in order to identify target audience and strategise communication materials. Key data such as demographics, industry and location can help marketers personalise their approach and time it correctly.
Recruiters
Although not specifically designed for them, recruiters can use the wealth of information provided by sales intelligence tools in order to identify potential employees and grow their team with the right candidate.
Features of Sales Intelligence Software
Lead Builders: This type of software allows companies to put together a list of prospective clients as well as offering the option to organise and filter these prospects.
Lead Scoring: Through this feature, users are able to “score” leads at different stages of the sales funnel based on how likely they are to end in a purchase.
Lead Management: Lead management features are multi-faceted allowing not only tools to manage existing leads, but strategies to gain new leads. Sales intelligence software can help streamline these processes.
Data Cleansing: Data enrichment tools are part of the sales intelligence software which can ensure that data is up-to-date and error-free.
Contact Data Availability: Sales intelligence software allows access to open-sourced company and prospect data. Continuously updating, this data is as current and accurate as possible, helping teams to use up-to-date contact information and insights to generate and close leads.
Filtering: Sales intelligence products offer a wealth of information. In order to manage this, advanced filtering tools can be used which help view only the most relevant information.
Alerts: Many sales intelligence products offer specific alert features which can be personalised based on what you want to be notified about be it sector-related information or news about competitors, all of which could ultimately help you boost sales.
Sales intelligence software helps companies boost their sales by identifying prospects with accuracy and ease, maximising cold calling through data automation, gain specific insights about their competition and by targeting clients with higher purchasing potential.
It is an essential marketing tool for businesses who want to optimise their sales funnels through the intelligent analysis of their prospects. Sales teams, marketing teams, and recruiter utilise sales intelligence software to help their companies boost sales.
