Contact Mining - more than just a name

Everyone's looking for a name, a path into the business, a contact to cling onto. But searching for names can bring back more than just a static phone number. Yes it's important to know who you're targeting but it's also important to make sure you're in line with their ideologies.

Why a fuzzy search just won't work

A journalist is a funny creature. I know this because technically I've been one and I know exactly what they're thinking. A couple of tips about journalists:

Acting quickly on a sales lead is vital

Was fascinated to see the latest research from Lead360 who claimed that calling a prospect 6 times AT THE RIGHT TIME increases conversion rates by 94% plus. That almost takes away the need for a percentage, you might as well say it definitely increases conversion rates...

If you're going to call a prospect 6 times though (they recommend 3 in the opening day of the lead!) you best have your facts right. That is a lot of selling time and your potential customer isn't going to want to waste that amount of time on someone who doesn't have the answers.

This study further highlights how sales triggers are now a necessity not an optional. Contact at the right time can only mean contacting after a trigger event. They refer to 'striking whilst the iron is hot'. It can not get much hotter than directly after a trigger event. With such fierce competition for business you can ill afford to rely on the occasional search to find these trigger events. You need to be monitoring companies, relevant topics, key insights that will get you in the door quickly. It is as simple as that.

Start-up of the day II

Delighted to report that Artesian have once again been selected as the Microsoft Bizspark start-up of the day, for the second time this year. Following on from the pitching victory at the Microsoft European summit and the 'cool vendor' award handed down from Gartner it all adds up to a great year thus far (insert excitable dance on table here).

You can see the interview with CEO Andrew Yates and some more footage from the Paris event earlier this year over on the Microsoft bizspark homepage.

Also, don't forget to take the media monitoring quiz over on the right hand side of this blog. Well worth a couple of minutes and will be covering solutions to most individual questions at a later date.

When you start to know a little bit more than sales intelligence

We've all done it (at least I hope we all have, otherwise I'll come across quite weird here...). Say you're at a party somewhere and someone starts talking about a holiday to Cuba. You're pre-empting everything they're saying because you've already seen the pictures on Facebook, you read the Twitter updates. As a matter of fact, it feels like you were on this holiday! You start jumping in adding your two pennies' worth to stories 'remember when you smoked cigars on the beach front?' before realizing you should probably calm your enthusiasm somewhat.

But knowing where to lead a conversation can be really, really useful, especially in a sales scenario. I saw an example a while back where a sales manager's potential customer had appeared on a television show and won a pretty competitive competition that of course, he'd be dining out on for some time to come. It got a small mention on a local online resource but no where else, no where major. Now if you're a sales guy and you've got a meeting with this potential customer would you normally know that? If you hadn't read the source (a likely chance) and you hadn't seen the programme than why would you?

But automated sales intelligence picks this up and gives you the knowledge just days before you meet. Of course, if you turned up, met, and just didn't mention it, that's not to say the meeting wouldn't go well. But imagine how much better it'd go, how much more he'd take to you, if you mentioned the show and sent him down a road of retelling the events. It's personal. It's shows you care. The next sales guy then might not mention it at all and just go about his business with no personal interaction. Who is the potential customer most likely to remember?

Is Skype going the same way as News Corp?

This article is provided by Artesian Solutions, delivering you *intelligent* news, personalised to match your business needs.

When Ebay took on Skype four years a go they had big plans to revolutionize their marketplace platform, plans which never really took off. The idea was to provide video trading to users, allowing them to bargain and negotiate more openly. In amongst the finer detail of these outlines, close comparisons with the aforementioned News Corp can not be ignored.

Although they probably wouldn't admit it, the ultimate ambition of the project was to rake in endless advertising money through "pay-per-call" services which could see advertisers paying between $2 and $12 per telephone call each time someone clicked on their link." This business model (relying on advertising) is all too close to the reason why Rupert Murdock has taken the bold decision to start charging for online content.

The new investors in the online communication service can only have parallel ambitions (you don't pay $1.9 billion for something unless you plan to make a lot of money). With 481 million registered users the potential is endless. But, as Ebay have shown, without a successful way to monetize, the investment is doomed to failure. Although, of course, there may be differing plans in the minds of the investors, I don't think it'll be too long before charges start creeping into the Skype network somewhere along the line.

Murdock has cushioned the blow for everyone else thinking along the same lines and once a trend has started, it's not to long before everybody jumps on the bandwagon. With their staggering number of users, Skype's demands can afford to be small, but the ring fence has been hurdled, and I suspect it's only a matter of time before there's no ring fence at all.

Twitter hides 8.7% of pure gold

'Go Find'

Don't ask me how they know, or how they found out but apparently 40% of Tweets on the social networking site Twitter are complete and utter 'babble'. The study, carried out by US firm Pear Analytics found that only 8.7% of messages could "be said to have value".

Picture just how big Twitter is in terms of sheer volume (in march it had 8m users just in the US!) and then think how difficult it would be for the human eye to find this value on it's own. It's the equivalent of leaving a twenty pound note somewhere in the States and telling someone to 'go find'.

But if it was easier to do, this information would certainly be worth having. Twitter can provide breaking news, useful opinion and an insight like very few other sights can offer. Twitter has become like a diary room for business, a place people use to validate ideas and bring home their viewpoint.

With semantic technology, this value can be tracked, and only the useful content will be surfaced without the hassle of a search. Whilst finding a twenty pound note somewhere in the States might still be virtually impossible, hunting the Internet in a similar way is fast becoming possible. 8.7% might seem like a low figure, but if you can find that 8.7% with little trouble, why would you not take advantage of it?

Sales tips, join the dots

You must be in the know

Take a look at these five sales techniques taken from a variety of guides and notice the obvious trend:

1) Answers to questions can make or break a deal. If you don’t have the answer, you need to find it.

2) When you make the phone call, make sure you are absolutely certain about the product.

3) Ask the right questions and the prospect will tell you what they want and how they need to be sold.

4) Know your customer's business. Customers expect you to know their business, customers and competition as well as you know your own product or service. Study your customer's industry. Know it's problems and trends. Find out who his biggest competitors are.

5) Develop a list of reasons why a customer should buy from you.

The trend is quite simple, these tips are not about the sales technique at all, they all point to having a firm backdrop of knowledge before you can even start thinking about selling. This knowledge, as shown above, can provide many advantages whether it be answering questions to impress, or developing a list of triggers indicating why you are right for the company in question.

Of course, gaining this knowledge is easier said than done. But companies such as Artesian are making it much easier to gain sales advantage without having to put in crazy hours to do so. Especially in these trying times for businesses it is essential to have the edge over your competitors and unfortunately, not having the knowledge is likely to result in not having the business.

The famous sales saying is 'don't sell the product, sell the advantages of the product' to the customer. Knowing exactly what the client wants and the market they're wanting it in, goes a long way to achieving this. Finding your sales advantage has never been so important.

The Sweet Smell of Success

Taking advantage of what's there

Whilst researching on a project earlier this week I couldn't help but laugh when I stumbled upon a website devoted to 'breaking sugar news'. Further more, once my mind had long since drifted from the task at hand, I found myself typing 'sugar news' into Google which happily provided a whole host of other competing sugar sites hoping to quench my sugar update thirst.

In fact, with some further investigation I discovered that you can also get regular headlines about Salt, Pepper, Vinegar and for the complete table set, ketchup... Ketchup news! (with top story 'ex-schools trustee gets probation in Ketchup Theft'...shocking stuff I'm sure you'll agree.)

Now joking aside here this really did hit home just how big a source (no pun intended, honestly I swear) the Internet really is. Because, when you think about it, there are probably thousands of businesses who need to keep track of sugar updates every single day and with I dare say, probably not too many other ways of doing it successfully. Bear in mind that this was one simple search, which basically means it's the tip of an enormous iceberg of sugar information which would probably swamp anyone trying to digest it.

So the question is, if you're a business not exploiting the Internet to gain intelligence, why not? Research by Experian this week once again points to the fact that more and more consumers are heading online adding to last week's report indicating an increase in online business ventures. All of this will simply mean more web activity available to track, no matter what you've a sweet tooth for. (find out more here)