Industrial Strength Prospect Intelligence

I was listening to Paul Greenberg giving a webinar yesterday when he used a phrase that really resonated with me: Industrial Strength Intelligence

CRM and marketing automation systems have given us intelligence. Things like a place to record demographic information, email communications and website behavior tied to lead scoring.

He pointed out that a big issue for creating higher engagement is that we never know enough about our prospects. But, that's changing for many of us—especially now that we can gather Industrial Strength Intelligence.

What ramps up intelligence to industrial strength?

The increase in "social behavior."

It's now possible to search the web and find out much more about prospects than we've ever known. And not just facts like their role and surface stuff about their companies. We can actually get to know more about our prospects as individuals.

People are spending time online posting comments and reviews. They're rating and discussing content, products, webinars, videos and slide decks. More and more of them are posting in forums, on Twitter, on blogs and updating their status on LinkedIn.

And the tools they're using are adding more and more widgets that enable the sharing of more and more of what we're doing, what we're interested in, our likes and dislikes.

Let's take a look at a few of the ways you can learn about your prospects:

LinkedIn:

• Look at the questions and answers someone posts on LinkedIn.
• The books they're reading at the bottom of their LinkedIn profiles.
• The blog posts that are pulled through on their LinkedIn profiles.
• What does their status update tell you?
• Even the people they're connected to can provide background.
• What about their past job history? Have they always been in their current career, or have they shifted? What knowledge from their past career could spin the way they look at solving problems in their current position?
• Who else are they connected to at their company? Potential influencers?

Twitter:

• Scanning their Twitter profile to see what they're interested in.
• What kinds of things do they ReTweet? Generally things we ReTweet are things we think are valuable to share.
• Who are they following? Anyone you know - like maybe one of your customers? How about a competitor?

Blogs:

• Comments your prospects leave on blog posts can help you get a feel for their relationship with the topic and/or the blogger.
• What if they have their own blog? Even if it's not related to their company, there's a lot to learn about the person that can give you insights to create better connections.

Personal:

• What if you find a product review for something they bought personally? The way they write the review can reveal a lot about hot buttons as well as features they love.
• Book reviews on Amazon or B&N can also be useful. When did they post it? What about the book or author was most valuable to them? Did they see something lacking they wished the author would've covered more? Can you provide that information, or send them a resource they will find helpful?

These are just a few thoughts about how we can generate the industrial strength intelligence that can guide us to developing content that resonates, conversations that engage and dialogue that moves prospects forward in building a relationship with you/your company.

This type of thinking is critical when you consider something else Paul said. It went something like this: People don't want just a relationship with a salesperson. They want a relationship with the whole company. I agree completely.

We have to start looking farther with our content, marketing and sales strategies than just getting the deal. We need to start extending everything we're doing to embrace the entire relationship lifecycle.

Comments

[Neil Sequeira - ReadyContacts]

Great post Ardath! This level of prospect intelligence is very useful. It's very much along the lines of a post I did on same day on how details like Linkedin, Twitter account ids and blog urls will become standard fields in prospect data.

http://blog.readycontacts.com/b2b-marketing-data-forecast-blog-twitter-linkedin-info-a-standard-data-field/

[rockannand]

Good post. You laid out all my secrets for how I prospect for consulting engagements. LinkedIn is very powerful tool for researching your buyer and others on the team, not just the company. If your target buyer is on these social networks, they expect that you are doing this due diligence research and look poorly at vendors/consultants who neglect this step.

I work mostly in B2B software environments and I find that my client's target audience really want to know what the customer experience will be like BEFORE they buy. That means putting the relationship before the product when selling yourself and your company.

Another thing I like to do is check out my client's forum for their customers to see how they take care of their customers. Always a good place to look for opportunities and something to discuss when you engage.

[Ardath Albee]

Thanks, Neil! If you haven't read his post, click on the link above. It's a good one.

Thanks, Rockannand! I love your suggestion about customer forums. Great intelligence possibility!

[industrial strength]

this is really nice post
thanks for sharing...