B2B sales intelligence: 4 ways the right data fuels your ABM campaigns

It’s not enough to have B2B sales data these days. It's about how quickly you can:
Approach it any other way, and you run the risk of failed campaigns, missed quota, and a disgruntled sales team. A great B2B sales intelligence process prevents this from happening. In this piece, we'll be sharing four ways you can take advantage of sales intelligence to maximize the results of your ABM campaigns.
But before we get into all the meaty stuff, let's get definitions out of the way.
B2B sales intelligence is additional intel and insights about your leads. This information can be used to arm your sales and marketing teams with the relevant data they need when they need it to make the sale.
The best way to get this information is through the use of sales intelligence software which can do everything from finding and enriching lead data to advertising and executing various account-based marketing or account-based everything strategies, like gifting.
Before we dive into some of the ways B2B sales intelligence makes this process easier, it’s important to make sure you have product-market fit. No ABM strategy can make up for a bad product or a product that doesn’t solve the pain point your ideal customer has.
Sales intelligence companies gather data from individuals and organizations alike. The type of data you have access to depends on the type of sales intelligence tool you use. The best enterprise sales intelligence software will provide real-time data on potential prospects including:
Sales intelligence gathers important data and showcases it in an easily digestible way. Your sales and marketing teams will find key insights faster than before.
Having the most up-to-date data is key for sales team in the B2B world. These days people are changing jobs a lot more frequently and it pays off to know when a previous customer changes jobs or if a target company receives new funding. These types of sales triggers will help your team close more deals.
The best sales intelligence data offers a window into a prospect's interests, goals, and business needs. It's easier to close deals when you can properly communicate with a potential customer by showing them your product or service can relieve pain points and help their business grow.
Knowing when a prospect is not ready to make a purchase can save your team time. Having clear insight into a target’s buying intent allows your sales reps to spend time with the right prospects at the right time.
All of these sales intelligence benefits work together to accelerate your sales pipeline. If your teams know who to target, when to reach out, and how to personalize their communication the result is a shorter sales cycle.
If you have been searching for ways to help your sales team prospect more efficiently sales intelligence is the answer.
Sales intelligence tools help automate processes to save time. Instead of spending time researching prospects, your sales reps can use their time on outreach. Automated sales intelligence is key to optimizing your sales rep’s time.
It’s no secret that personalization gets results. In fact, Epsilon Marketing found that 80% of consumers are more likely to buy a product or service when they receive a tailored experience. Sales intelligence software makes it easy to add personalization to your sales process.
Sales intelligence data helps highlight what strategies are working and what aren’t. Your marketing and sales teams can use this data to improve their tactics.
B2B sales intelligence software is essential for running account-based marketing (ABM) or account-based everything (ABE) campaigns at any level of scale. We know this...because sales intelligence is an essential part of our ABE program.
The first step in running a successful ABM campaign is getting a clear idea of what your ideal customer profile is (ICP). The only way to do this is to invest in customer research, which may include:
As tempting as it may be to do all of your research online, you’ll get much better intel about your ICP by picking up the phone and talking to customers.
The goal of all of this customer research is to understand and analyze it to the point where you can put together a detailed ICP, which includes:
Note: It is not enough to create a single ICP. This information — and its associated data — is always changing, so you need to make sure it’s enriched, up-to-date, and accurate.
Just because you can find and enrich all the sales data doesn’t mean you should.
After all, trying to target everyone means you’ll end up either reaching no one or spreading your resources way too thin. Both of which mean your ABM or ABX campaigns will underperform.
A better approach is to prioritize and target the right prospects who are the most likely to convert. This requires a mindset shift for both sales and marketing, where you collectively decide on a list of strategic accounts to go after.
While this approach can work at any size and budget, for the best results, we recommend focusing on accounts with an average contract size of at least $15K USD per year. This ensures your efforts are more likely to scale profitably.
While prioritizing who to target, how often to reach out, and when to do so is important in any ABM campaign, the most critical elements are which contact method you use and what you say.
Compelling ABM messaging can overcome a lot of flaws in your campaign strategy. However, bad or irrelevant messaging will tank even the best ABM campaign strategy.
Here are some tips that have helped us craft personalized messaging at scale:
Sales and marketing alignment is the holy grail for revenue teams. And we've found out that it plays a crucial part in the success of your ABM/ABE campaign (these acronyms 😴).
Yes, alignment starts with getting buy-in from the C-Suite.
But it also means having at least a couple of shared goals and open communication lines. Especially around target accounts and background information on your ideal customer profile(s). This is almost impossible or a manual and painful task without the right sort of actionable sales intelligence.
The end result of this approach is that you eliminate silos and hold everyone accountable for their individual roles in the campaign.
From understanding your ICP to getting alignment between sales and marketing and selecting the right prospects to target, it all starts with having access to the right sales intelligence data. B2B sales intelligence data should be a key part of your prospecting toolkit.
That’s where UserGems comes in handy. Our software helps with everything from turning your calendar into a lead-generating machine to identifying when to reach out to your most likely buyers.