William Philipps, one of MediaDev’s Senior Lead Generation and Social Selling Executives, gives his insight on using market intelligence to enhance sales outreach to generate more (and better quality) leads.
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SHOW NOTES
What is a marketing intelligence report? [1:35]
Why is this information important and how can it be used in the context of marketing and sales outreach? [2:20]
How can a sales rep use this report to create pitches when they’re doing outreach? [4:25]
What types of insights are most important? [5:35]
What types of indicators to factor in the equation for your assessment? [8:05]
Other added-value a market intelligence report can bring to a sales rep [9:45]
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TRANSCRIPT
Liz Lemarchand: How is it that innovative software solutions have the ability to change the world yet they don’t sell themselves? How is it that I know my target market but I’m not able to generate enough sales opportunities? How do I even get started to create visibility for my brand when I’m not an expert in marketing? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. Welcome to SMplified: Software Marketing Made Simple!
Hey everyone, this is Liz from MediaDev, and welcome to another episode of our podcast. Today’s topic is how market intelligence reports are crucial to any sales person’s bag of tools. And today I’m going to be speaking to William about that topic. So hey, William, welcome to the podcast today. How’s everything?
William Phillips: Thanks, yeah, things are going well. Thanks for having me. I think it’s my third time on here so it’s becoming a recurring thing, and hopefully, it continues.
Liz Lemarchand: Absolutely, and just for our listeners to know — so William is one of our top social selling executives in the organization, working very closely with customers to do outreach, lead generation programs, and as well help with some value-added insights for our market intelligence reports that are delivered to salespeople, so why don’t you start, William, by telling us what is a Market Intelligence Report and what types of information is included in this type of report.
William Phillips: Yeah, so a market Intelligence Report is basically sourced information to give a broad picture of a company, so it’s information relevant to companies in the market and also trends, competitors, customers you know, even partner information which is quite important, especially in a technology space.
And then you got your key decision-makers, which is basically what sales reps are after. So that’s the type of information that you generally find in a report that we do. Obviously, that can vary if it’s not a salesperson that’s after intelligence support, company executive that you know the insight information might vary so and just to tap onto that, reports you know when I said they can vary depending on a client’s requirements with what we do our clients are targeting the ISV space so they want an in-depth overview of products and services offered and who oversees and manages them like a Rep that I deal with on a regular basis. He’s always harping on you, know, William, you know who manages this product. What is this? and the region that I’m doing in the UK. It’s an interesting one because sometimes that you might find in one region there’s specifically only sales and business development reps, and then you might find in another region like Germany the product management team is based out of there, so that’s really good insight for the sales rep on how they target that particular account.
Liz Lemarchand: Yeah, absolutely. And I agree with you. I think the really in-depth details are something that a salesperson needs and they just don’t have time to go looking for that information themselves. So absolutely knowing the structure of an organization and who does what and where they’re located and you know what are some of the main products that could, potentially, you know, be a source of a partnership opportunity and what are some other technology partners that those companies already have in place I will give an ISV that understanding of, you know, could this potentially be a buy or a build scenario? You know, we talk about that a lot in the ISV OEM space. Is this ISV really going to build out these features themselves, or are they willing to partner with somebody else? So understanding that you know can also give value to say like, hey well this account that I have on my target list maybe isn’t of the best use of my time because their policy really is to build out those features themselves and they probably never would enter into an OEM partnership so definitely, definitely agree with you on those points.
So why is this information important and how can it be used in the context of marketing and sales outreach? I mean, we kind of touched on why it’s important, but how would then a sales rep use this report to, you know, create pitches, let’s say when they’re doing their outreach.
William Phillips: OK, so let’s use the ISV space for example, ’cause that’s what we specialize in. So you’ve got Rep 1 from, say, one vendor who wants to target a particular company who they believe could benefit from utilizing their technology to enhance, you know, the company’s capability or the product’s capabilities. So Rep 1 wants to know what products and services are offered because most ISV companies offer multiple products and services. So once identified what products and services are being offered? Who manages them? All this takes time and a lot of research, so you know a lot of the time reps can’t find this information they probably don’t even know where really to look. You know your LinkedIn and your general sort of website. But with our team, you know we specialize in that so it sort of makes sense I think to outsource or have someone do an Intelligence Report, I think. Did I answer that question?
Liz Lemarchand: So what types of insights have been the most important to you and why? ’cause I know you use these reports too, you know, it’s not just that we’ve delivered them to the customer ’cause you work hand in hand with the sales reps to be able to identify qualified opportunities for them to follow up. So when you get, you know, the access to our market Intel report and you’re working with the Rep to really evaluate an account and find the best way in, what are the insights really that have been the most pertinent to you.
William Phillips: That’s a good question. I suppose the business imperatives one is a huge one. What are the company goals moving forward? You know, they’re looking to improve their products, which is crucial because if I think our product can enhance it as a company’s capability or product capabilities, if they’re actually looking to do that, well, then you know, that’s great insight, isn’t it?
Another one is target markets — verticals and horizontals. You know what products and so again, what products and services they offer. What does their product actually do? A lot of the time lower sales reps actually don’t know the ins and outs of a particular product, so they’re more sort of going in quite blind. And it’s super important ’cause to know what product they have and how that can align with your business and service, and probably the most important one is again all sales reps want to know who the key decision-makers are. And it’s not about just what they do within their role, what product you know, they oversee.
There’s a lot of insight that you can get from one identifying the key decision-maker jumping on their LinkedIn profile, understanding their profile, so what they do, their work history. So I’ll give you an example. A number of product managers were hired within a particular company we’ve had ten years experience working with Microsoft and as a sales Rep in the ISV space, that sort of tells you something or so, so they’ve got history working with Microsoft so that it would generally mean that they’re probably using my Microsoft in some shape or form within that company. So you know, again, that’s a great sort of insight. It’s probably assuming more than anything but yeah, it’s sort of a common thing within the ISV space.
Liz Lemarchand: So when you’re ranking the viability of an account to outreach to them based on the information that you have in a market Intelligence Report, what types of indicators do you factor into the equation for your assessment and why?
William Phillips: I think the product and service have to align with what’s what you’re offering. That’s crucial because if your product can’t fit into their business somehow or it’s pointless, isn’t it? They’re going to make sure that the key decision-makers are in your region and that’s a big thing actually because so many times in the past I’ve looked at accounts where a lot of the key decision-makers have been based in the US, which is common you know most big ISV companies, you know, ISV technology companies are based in the states.
You know this yourself as is with your experience in what you do. So I recently looked at a report can’t remember what the company was and I was thinking how do I rank this? I think 11 out of 12 of their decision-makers were based in the states so to me that says OK, all the decision-makers are based in the states.
I can only sell in the UK. That’s going to really affect me, but on the flip side, if I can cross rate if I can cross-sell into another region, well then, it’s going to be moderate to high. It’s got probably moderate or high potential, and on top of that, and the reason for that sorry is because they already utilizing our product in the United States, not in the UK. So it’s just sort of you just gotta differ. Are the decision-makers based in your region or are they based in another region and that’s sort of how I come up with my ranking?
Liz Lemarchand: So is there anything else you want to add about the value that market intelligence reports can bring to a Sales Rep?
William Phillips: I think another area I don’t think we’ve touched on is when sales reps are evaluating their account list for the year. I think market intelligence reports could add immense value to that because, you know, I’m sure all sales reps are out there they come to a stage where they’ve got 5 or 10 accounts they want to add, but you know they’re limited to how many accounts they can have for the year. So that’s where I think a market Intelligence Report would certainly add value you know and just keep in mind, especially the viewers that these intelligence reports can be highly customizable because every sales rep got their own philosophy on how they sell, so it’s just a matter of understanding what you want out of the intelligence report, you know, letting MediaDev or whether you’re gonna get to do these reports, let them know what you want so when you do get the report it’s tailored to your requirements.
Liz Lemarchand: Excellent, that’s great advice. Thank you so much, William, for your time today. And for those of you listening, of course, you can always find other great assets and resources on our resource library at mediadev.com. So thanks again for joining us today.
William Phillips: Thanks for having me
Liz Lemarchand: Take care, bye.
Liz Lemarchand: You just listened to simplified brought to you by MediaDev. If you have software marketing questions or need help marketing your software solution, reach out to us at contact@mediadev.com and check out other amazing assets for you on our resource library at mediadev.com.
