BEST PRACTICE: The data dilemma
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Keeping data fresh is a major challenge for all B2B sales & marketing teams. Dan White – Regional Sales Director, Bureau van Dijk, UK
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Transcript of BEST PRACTICE: The data dilemma
Keeping data fresh is a major challenge for all B2Bsales & marketing teams.
Dan White – Regional Sales Director, Bureau van Dijk, UK
Abstract
• Relying on your sales or marketing team to diligently populate your CRM with accurate data is unrealistic.
• Collecting and maintaining richer data – to help with your targeting and sales development – is simply not possible in-house.
• But there is a solution. A solution that can empower your sales and marketing to new levels of efficiency.
• How are salespeople measured/targeted? What will keep them in a job?
Primary Concern Secondary Concern
Relying on your sales team to diligently populate your CRM with accurate data is unrealistic.
• How are marketers measured/targeted? What will keep them in a job?
Primary Concern Secondary Concern
Relying on your marketing team to diligently populate your CRM with accurate data is unrealistic.
Fundamental Flaw
• Sales people are not measured on their CRM skills
• However, sales people have the most exposure to the data
• Is it really their job? Expensive data entry resource
• Most sales teams have staff turnover
• Some CRM platforms are not great
• Some salespeople may “interpret” the rules to suit…………
Data issues…..
Duplicate records
BT Plc British Telcomms British Telecommunications PLC B.T.P.L.C BT
Old data
Incorrect dataMartin Williams CFO Andrea Waterston CFO
Data issues…..
Insufficient data
Dangerous job titles
– Lea Burrell Actually a woman– Samantha Forrest Moved to a new part of the business– Nathan Glynn N@b
Not always their fault
• Companies who have changed address in the past month 47,355
• Companies in receivership/administration/worse in the past month 49,527
• Companies with completed M&A in the past month 978
• New companies created in the past month55,868
Size of the problem
150,000 company records
Roughly 250 working days per annum
600 records every day
85 per hour
Just to update, how long to enrich?
What happens next year?
Impact of the problem
• Sales people cannot source, research and engage efficiently
• Wrong companies spoken with and right companies missed
• Moral can be impacted - as can sales
• Marketers cannot use the data to gain insights
• Well targeted and effective campaigns cannot be executed
• Leads may be reduced, sales will complain and moral can be impacted
What now?
• Bad data can really hinder you
• Impacts on sales performance
• Impacts on marketing performance
• Manual updating is painful and not normally an option
Internal data
Externally managed data
One solution is to link internal data to a source of external data that is professionally maintained
External Providers
• There are a lot of them
• Can look the same but be very different
• Bringing in external content can be scary!
Good external providers
• Should understand content and how people can work with it
• Should demonstrate a proven track record
• Should bring together a range of content and update in a timely manner
• Should offer content that is relevant to your BD requirements
• Should offer trials/assessment of their data
• Should have full support services
Deal with the issues
• A matching exercise will link your internal content to that of the external provider
What now?
• Cleanse & update your records
• Remove dead companies
• Update correct company name
• Update correct address
• Remove duplicate records
Enhance Remaining Records
Add industry classifications– allows marketing teams to analyse the customer base to find what an “ideal” customer looks like
Enhance Remaining Records
Add correct financials – what is the size of the opportunity?
Get Results
• Marketing
– Use insight to target the right people, in the right companies, at the right time, with the right message
– Deliver increases in volume & relevance of leads
• Sales
– Time speaking to the right companies rather than trying to find them in the first place– Understand companies prior to approach – Increase conversion - £££
Gain a Huge Advantage
• Profile & target companies by relevance to your offering
– Turnover & employees– Industry sector– Financial year end
• Apply additional intelligence
– What technology is a company using?– Innovative external providers can provide insight on this
Technology Tracker
• Provides innovative technology intelligence on over 50,000 UK companies
• Powered by HG Data, collated from unstructured documents across the internet, archived web and offline resources
• Deliver a perfect target list
Sales Intelligence
Growth plans – how are they effectively targeting prospects?
Summary
• Who owns data? Whose problem is it?
• Why data can decay quickly
• Problems & impact of unreliable data
• Potential solutions and what to look for in an external provider
• Having fixed the problems, what are the opportunities?
• Using content from the right external provider allows sales teams to focus on their primary concern without impacting the primary concern of marketing – the data to the mutual benefit of both parties
Relying on your sales team to diligently populate your CRM with accurate data is unrealistic.
