“Data, analytics, and AI capabilities have become integral for success in the sales and marketing space. This partnership with XANT will enhance our revenue acceleration offering to deliver the kind of data-driven customer experiences needed to drive sales today,” said Narasimha Kini, EXL Senior Vice President, and Business Unit Leader. “XANT is a proven innovator when it comes to AI-driven sales platforms. We are proud to bring this solution to market and accelerate the adoption of modern digital selling strategies to power growth and profitability for our clients”

The partnership will also offer XANT and its customers the ability to leverage EXL’s wide-ranging expertise in digital transformation and operations management through implementation and business consulting engagements.

“We are thrilled to have EXL join the XANT partner network. EXL is an innovation leader, and our product and service is better as a result of this partnership,” said Dave Boyce, XANT Chief Strategy Officer. “We look forward to working side by side with the EXL team to drive meaningful results for our customers.”

About EXL

EXL (NASDAQ: EXLS) is a leading operations management and analytics company that helps our clients build and grow sustainable businesses. By orchestrating our domain expertise, data, analytics, and digital technology, we look deeper to design and manage agile, customer-centric operating models to improve global operations, drive profitability, enhance customer satisfaction, increase data-driven insights, and manage risk and compliance. Headquartered in New York, EXL has approximately 31,600 professionals in locations throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, India, the Philippines, Colombia, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. EXL serves customers in multiple industries including insurance, healthcare, banking and financial services, utilities, travel, transportation and logistics, media and retail, among others. For more information, visit www.exlservice.com.

About XANT

XANT offers the leading Enterprise Sales Engagement Platform that accelerates revenue. With Playbooks from XANT, sales professionals increase productivity, optimize customer interactions, and connect to the right buyers. Playbooks manages lead follow-up and prospecting cadences, automates administrative tasks, and uses data to predict who, when, and how to engage buyers for the best outcome—all to set your sales reps up for success. Using Playbooks, thousands of sales teams have been able to accelerate revenue using buyer behavior data and AI—including Groupon, Dell, Sage, Ping Identity, Caesars Entertainment, Pluralsight, Motorola, Fidelity, American Express, and Athena Health. For more information, visit www.insidesales.com.

In this article:

1. 1. 1. Ensure Outreach Sales Methods Are Factored into Your Strategy
      2. What is Outreach Sales?
      3. Maximize Inbound Outreach Sales Through Marketing
      4. Adopt a Customer-Centric Outbound Outreach Sales Method
      5. Use Up-To-Date Outreach Software
      6. Maintain Outreach Sales Engagement Platforms

RELATED: KNOW YOUR SALES ORGANISATION INSIDE AND OUT: 7 WAYS TO INCREASE VISIBILITY

Outreach Sales Tactics That Deliver Results

Ensure Outreach Sales Methods Are Factored into Your Strategy

Buyers are now equipped with more resources than ever: – word of mouth recommendations, online reviews, search engine research, and social media groups. Regardless of product or service, people can now make an informed decision about whom they provide their customers.

Therefore, businesses need to adapt to market behaviors, and sales teams should also change to incorporate best sales practices that boost leads and sales generation. What previously were good enough sales methods, might now be out of date practices.

What is Outreach Sales?

Sales outreach is essentially the process of reaching out to engage with customers and prospects in a profound manner. Customers can be new prospects or past clients who are no longer doing business.

Cold calling, in an attempt to sell goods or services, is a relatively outdated and generally unwanted approach. Successful salespeople need to reach out with the right message, in the correct manner, at the appropriate time.

Maximize Inbound Outreach Sales Through Marketing

An inbound outreach sales method is one that attracts prospective customers or leads to you. Usually, some form of marketing has attracted the client who is expressing an interest in your service or product. The client wants to know more and to be contacted by the salesforce. An example of this might be an advert in the press or social media.

Adopt a Customer-Centric Outbound Outreach Sales Method

An outbound outreach sales method is when the salesforce seeks out prospects. This action is necessary to get in touch with new customers. However, it can be harder to master if the clients are not expecting contact.

For sales teams to close sales, they need to establish good relationships with their potential clients or leads and deliver excellent sales cadence. Cultivating a connection with a stranger and building rapport with customers is difficult, and the key is to make them see your value. Having the right outbound outreach sales staff is crucial; people who can have confidence, ability to think on their feet, and who are positive and upbeat.

Outbound outreach sales methods are instrumental in making that first client contact, and we all know first impressions last. Both inbound and outbound outreach sales methods serve different purposes within the sales process, and a combination of both ways is crucial to business growth.

Use Up-To-Date Outreach Software

Door to door salespeople may still come knocking, but nowadays they are generally a sales force of the past. In the digital age, most sales contact is made through email and other digital platforms, with phone contact still a necessary tool for personalized communication.

Changing towards a mostly digital methodology has altered the sales process and, in many ways, has had a significant impact on the way salespeople conduct outreach. New methods of engagement can include email, text, social media, and targeted advertising on tv.

Having the right outreach sales tools can support your sales force to close more deals and, in the long run, create more revenue and growth. Having many channels to engage with customers will connect you quicker.

Maintain Outreach Sales Engagement Platforms

Maintaining an accurate contact database of potential buyers will save time in the long run. Time can be wasted phoning defunct numbers and not getting hold of the right customers. Previous clients who have gone cold are a large part of this group, so regular customer service calls are a good idea. Maintain updated contact information where possible and invest in intelligent software that can pull data from other resources.

Outreach Alternative Methods

• • Having a robust call script, particularly when starting out or for new staff, is an excellent way to reference essential aspects that need to be conveyed to customers. It’s best not to read from the script and instead make the conversation as natural as possible.
  • Some businesses buy leads when they haven’t formed a reliable database of contacts.
  • The nature of cold calling means sales teams will have a high percentage of rejections when phoning and is a natural part of the job. Staff must take the denials with a pinch of salt and, as a learning point, to move on to the next.

RELATED: 15 SALES MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE AND CRMS USED BY SALES TEAMS

Which methods of outreach sales do you or you use? What tactics could you improve on? Share them with us in the comments section below.

Up Next:

• • • HOW TO CREATE AN EFFECTIVE SALES CALL SCRIPT OUTLINE
    • THE TOP 3 SKILLS NEEDED FOR SALES DEVELOPMENT REPS W/TYLER WICKS @HPE
    • XANT INTRODUCES INDUSTRY’S FIRST MOBILE SALES ENGAGEMENT SOLUTION

RELATED: Sales Email Secrets | Secrets Of Email Prospecting To Increase Open Rates

In this article:

1. The Basics of a Compelling Email Sales Template
   1. Define Your Goal
   2. Keep It Short
   3. Personalize It
2. Don’t Neglect the Subject Line
3. Build Rapport with the Sales Template Opening Line
4. The Best Sales Emails’ Body Solves Problems
5. Close Your Sales Email By Showing Prospects the Next Step

Sales Email Template | Effective Email Tips That Bring In Customers

The Basics of a Compelling Email Sales Template

To succeed in prospecting or lead generation, you need to have an effective sales email template. Research confirms that email is not only the most preferred method of contact for any decision-maker, but it’s also the marketing technique most likely to receive a response.

It doesn’t mean all emails are excellent in attracting the right people. Many of them can falter in bringing a potential customer into the sales process.

One of the ways to improve your chances of getting a client is to follow the proven best practices in crafting your email template for sales. Use these three content tips when creating your sales email template:

• Define your goal
• Keep it short
• Personalize it

Let me expound on each one below.

1. Define Your Goal

Planning your goals for great sales email templates

Your sales email template must be specific. To do that, start with one clear goal.

This may sound too simple, but a sales team can still miss the fundamentals. The point of an email is not to include every piece of information about the company in one message.

Before writing your sales prospecting email template or any email, you need to identify your goal. Ask yourself:

• Who are my future subscribers?
• What does this potential customer want to hear from me?
• How can I demonstrate the benefits for this audience?
• What response(s) do I want this message to generate?
• What kind of conversation do I like to have?

Make sure you know why your prospect should be talking to you. Don’t make it about you. Spell out how you can help your prospects.

• Are you trying to get a decision-maker to respond?
• Are you trying to figure out the right person to contact at a particular account?
• Perhaps you are trying to demonstrate why your product is more beneficial than a competitor’s.

Another goal is you want to send an email to someone’s inbox that can pique their interest. Your goal will dictate your sales email template.

2. Keep It Short

Once you’ve identified the purpose of your sales email template, craft it strategically. It’s imperative that the content of an email warrants the effort or even the sense of urgency to open it.

The best sales emails have messages that are short and easy to consume.

Your prospects don’t have a lot of time to read them. They probably receive 20 to 100 a day.

If your email already has an excellent open rate, the best chance to increase the readership is to make it skimmable.

Open Rate Definition: This refers to the percentage of opened emails. It shows that the email didn’t bounce, and the reader was able to access it. The ideal rate can differ between industries and other factors (such as the subject line). Experts, though, believe it is somewhere between 20% and 40%.

Get right to the point. Here’s an example of an introduction:

I am writing in hopes of talking to the appropriate person who handles the marketing for your company.

Then, you can use bullet points and indents to highlight essential features, benefits, and dates. Some examples of the body of the email may be:

• Why voicemails fail and how to fix it
• How to use email to get your voicemails heard
• Best practices to achieve a more live form of conversation as a result of your voicemails

Remember, no universal law of email physics requires prospects to respond or engage. Guide them through the message instead of greeting them with a wall of text.

When it comes to writing your sales email template, make formatting your friend. Get help from these little gems:

• Indents
• Bullets and numbers
• Lists
• Hyperlinks
• Calls to action

It doesn’t mean all these features need to show up in every email. Adapt this approach to what’s most important.

This way, even if your prospects don’t read the entire email, they’ll get the main points. This technique in writing your sales email template builds a sense of trust.

It also leaves the door open for future contact.

Make the purpose of your email clear by ending with a call to action. Here are some examples:

• “If you think there is someone else I should speak with, can you please put me in touch with the right person?”
• “Register here.”
• “Please let me know if you’re available to chat on [date and time].”

Pro Tips:

• Words like “offer,” ”sale,” and “call now” might set off spam filters. Avoiding these increases your open and even click-through rates. Your email can also hit its target.
• Test different subject lines and words to see which ones earn a better response. For example, “talk” implies less commitment than “meet.” Mix them up and split test them.
  • If you need additional resources, read these subject writing tips from Business Insider.

Click-Through Rate Definition: This is the ratio of clicks made on the links found in your sales email template. Like the open rate, the percentages can vary.

Either way, it’s a helpful tool to determine the success of a marketing campaign. A good ratio means the email sales team is able to elicit a response or engage their subscribers.

3. Personalize It

Using personalized emails for a great sales template

How do you respond to an automated email when you didn’t ask for one? Do you open and delete upon recognizing what it is?

If you don’t like them, why would you expect significant results from sending them out? If it sounds like an automated message, it might as well be one.

Practice personalization in your Salesforce email templates. Add details such as where you first met the prospect or the prospect’s name. Write them in the subject lines and repeat them in the body.

Why does personalization in your sales email template work? Everyone wants to feel important.

One of the best ways to achieve this is to research the company and potential customer. Then, you can tailor the content to their needs:

• “It was great chatting with you at [event] last weekend. I wanted to follow up.”
• “Based on your online profile, you appear to be the appropriate person to contact.”
• “When we last spoke, you were off to Hawaii. I wanted to check back in after your time away.”

Pro Tip: Reconsider HTML. Images can make it harder to get your email in the inbox. They also may decrease your response rate because busy decision-makers just want the information, not the distractions surrounding it.

Once you’ve got these vital content tips down, it’s time to know how exactly to apply it in the different parts of a sales email.

RELATED: The Sales Revolution: Selling More Via Personalized Sales Engagement

Don’t Neglect the Subject Line

The subject line is the first thing your prospect will see before they even open your email. Therefore, you should make sure it is as enticing as possible to them.

One way to make your subject line catch the eye of your potential customers is by using their name. It makes the email more personal and thus, more appealing to click on and see what is in it for them.

Aside from that, keeping your email subject line concise can make it more appealing for people to click through, and is even more critical for a follow-up email template.

Try asking a short question that communicates the goal of the email while still being enticing. For example:

• Want this invite?
• Got 10 minutes?
• N Ideas for (a vital thing to prospect)

There are plenty of approaches you can take when it comes to your email subject line. However, you should make sure your email content can follow through to what the subject line promises.

Be clear and consistent.

Build Rapport with the Sales Template Opening Line

After the subject line, the opening line in your email copy should help you establish a connection with your clients immediately. Don’t go into the sales pitch yet.

For example, you met through relevant social media like LinkedIn or on another platform. Another point of connection might be that they were a previous client you want to send a follow-up email to.

Perhaps you might both be acquainted with the same person. If they were referred to you, mention that in the opening line to establish a connection.

The subject of your email will come soon enough. Take this time to create a mutual connection so the email will feel even more personalized.

You can also mention events where you were both in attendance. As long as you keep it short and relevant, you can successfully transition the attention of your prospect to the main body of the email.

The Best Sales Emails’ Body Solves Problems

If you’re using prospecting email templates to introduce your business to new people, make sure your email body shows how you can provide a solution to their problem.

Begin by highlighting the problem they may have in the industry. Then, segue into what you do that can help provide a solution for that problem.

Before being salespeople, you should be solution finders first. This is why research is vital to all successful email campaigns.

You can back up your claim and position it as a solution by providing relevant data. Just make sure you don’t make the email copy too long.

Basically, in the email body, you should:

1. Highlight a fundamental problem or issue of your prospect.
2. Express what you’re doing…
3. And how it helps your prospect…
4. Attain a valuable result.

Close Your Sales Email By Showing Prospects the Next Step

Once you’ve gotten your potential customers to understand your worth, it’s time to show them their potential next steps. You’ve already gotten them interested, so you should strike while the iron is hot.

Since you’re only prospecting at this point, you shouldn’t immediately try and get them to avail of your product or service. Instead, this is the time to encourage your potential customer to schedule a meeting or a call with you.

Using a question in the closing line improves the chances of getting a response. Ideally, you’d want the prospect to engage with your email, thus letting you know just how sufficient your efforts have been.

RELATED: 7 Data-Backed Sales Best Practices [INFOGRAPHIC]

In this article:

1. Unlocking the Power of Data With Tech
2. Turning Data Into Predictive Insights
3. Turning Predictive Analytics Into Action With Predictive Insights
4. Why High-Definition Data Matters
5. Connect to HD Data With the Predictive Cloud
6. Predictive Scoring of Leads and Accounts With HD Data
7. Prescriptive Sales Activities With High-Definition Data

How HD Data Can Improve Each Stage of the Sales Funnel

Unlocking the Power of Data With Tech

HD data for successful sales predictions

Many people tout the benefits of data and its abilities to predict the future. While it certainly has that potential, data isn’t a Magic 8 Ball you can shake and suddenly get the answers you’re looking for.

In fact, data is very complex by nature. It can be too big, unstructured, or just plain messy.

Many organizations waste a lot of time and effort trying to capture and organize it.

In order to obtain real benefit from data, organizations need technology that can extract the right information and package it in an organized, consumable way.

Turning Data Into Predictive Insights

Most conversations around data also involve predictive analytics, but people wrongly mix up the two.

• Data, or big data, refers to the ever-growing repository of information.
• On the other hand, predictive analytics is the rigorous analysis of data for the purpose of distilling meaningful insights that can serve as a prediction of future outcomes and trends.

Data scientists frequently find themselves limited by their access to rich datasets, and their work is often mired in the mundane efforts of data cleansing and normalization.

It’s tough to find rich historical and continuously fed datasets, but they serve as the foundation for the most powerful predictive insights.

Turning Predictive Analytics Into Action With Predictive Insights

What are predictive insights? They’re actionable views in a company’s sales processes.

Companies can execute predictive insights based on predictive analytics. They can use the knowledge they gain analyzing previous trends and turn it into action.

With high-definition data, you analyze how past trends could affect the future. You can also come up with best practices based on what the data says works.

Predictive insights are a way to drive your goals in the right direction. Of course, none of this is possible without high-definition data.

Why High-Definition Data Matters

There are a lot of organizations offering predictive solutions and promising to improve sales outcomes. However, the real strength of a predictive engine isn’t just in the engine itself, but the data that feeds it.

One of XANT’s distinct competitive advantages with its predictive engine, Neuralytics, is that it has access to HD Data. HD Data is massive amounts of timely and accurate data blended together from multiple sources.

It’s called “HD Data” because it provides maximum clarity and maximum resolution.

Thanks to more than a decade of collection, XANT has accumulated data on more than 90 billion sales interactions, and that number is growing. The system is continuously collecting and analyzing new data in real-time, becoming smarter with each interaction.

In addition to sales data, XANT has access to external contextual data on things like stock prices, recent news, and social media, which help fine-tune predictive models.

Sales organizations can use HD Data to improve the following sales functions by leveraging specific apps that are built on top of the Neuralytics predictive engine:

• • Predictive Lead and Account Scoring with NeuralView
  • Prescriptive Sales Activities with and Playbooks
  • Prescriptive Opportunity Scoring with Sales Advisor
  • Pipeline Management with HD Forecast
  • Predictive Forecasting with HD Forecast

Sales organizations can use this very same predictive engine to improve lead generation, customer success, and potentially thousands of other business functions.

In fact, XANT has made HD Data available to other companies and apps.

RELATED: How Predictive Forecasting Can Improve Forecast Accuracy

Connect to HD Data With the Predictive Cloud

The Predictive Cloud, powered by Neuralytics, is a first-of-its-kind open platform that enables businesses of all sizes to build rich, powerful predictive apps that drive business results.

As people use these applications, each interaction and its outcomes are captured and processed in the predictive engine.

Over time, the machine grows smarter as it learns from the data feeding it. A continuous flow of information between the predictive engine and each of the apps also means the applications become more precise in their capabilities and recommendations.

This sharing of information is further enhanced when applications sit together in a platform and interact with one another. In this case, the relevant information isn’t just shared linearly between one application and the predictive engine, but across all applications.

By placing high-definition data at the center of your applications, you can develop highly accurate predictive models that will drastically improve the performance of your sales team.

Predictive Scoring of Leads and Accounts With HD Data

One of the many ways an app with high-definition data can improve sales performance is through lead and account predictive scoring. One app that can help with identifying high-potential leads is NeuralView.

Generally, sales reps spend a lot of time nurturing leads that aren’t right for them. This can lead to wasted time and effort because they’ll chase after unproductive leads.

With high-definition data, sales reps take a step in the right direction.

Predictive leads and accounts scoring helps recover lost time by leading sales reps toward more promising prospects. Through the analysis of historical datasets, the app can identify which leads will be more open to responding to your sales reps.

Prescriptive Sales Activities With High-Definition Data

HD Data has two primary abilities: the ability to predict and the ability to prescribe.

HD data can help your sales team predict different types of factors in sales.

High-definition data can also help by prescribing sales activities that drive the most results. For example, it can help recommend the best time to call a lead or which email address to use.

Although artificial intelligence is making its way into plenty of organizations, not enough are treating it right. Not only will HD Data make sales teams more efficient, but they are also creating effective solutions.

When used right, data can give a significant boost to your sales team’s productivity. By using HD Data to help you reach the right decisions, you’re on your way to making each step of the sales funnel successful.

Learn how HD Data can help you sell faster, sell smarter, and sell more in this free ebook.

Free eBook: The Science of Lead Scoring, Prioritization & Sales Success

79% of marketing leads never convert to sales. That means inbound reps waste a lot of time chasing the wrong leads.

Get eBook Now

Have you tried using HD Data to improve your sales funnel success? How did it go? Let us know by leaving a comment down below!

Up Next:

• How Predictive Lead and Account Scoring Fuels Sales Efficiency
• How Prescriptive Sales Activities Optimize Your Sales Process 
• Use Prescriptive Opportunity Scoring to Win More Deals This Quarter

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on March 1, 2016, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

RELATED: How To Hire The Leader At The Right Time W/ Doug Landis @Emergence Capital

In this article:

1. What Was the Accelerate ’17 Executive Summit?
2. What Is a Sales Leader and What Qualities Make for A Good Sales Leader?
   1. Dan Page, VP of Sales Automation, ADP
   2. Tiffani Bova, Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce
   3. Yusuf Tayob, Senior Managing Director, Accenture
   4. Ruben Sigala, EVP and CMO, Caesars Entertainment
   5. Kelly Kay, Managing Partner of the Global Software Practice, Heidrick & Struggles
3. Unraveling The Sales Technology Stack
4. Next Era Selling: Selling Sales for Global Growth
5. How to Find and Join the Right Board
6. Creating Differentiation in Your Industry to Become the Leader

Meet the Top Sales Leaders At Inside Sales’ Accelerate ’17 Executive Summit

What Was the Accelerate ’17 Executive Summit?

Every year, we like to huddle with the smartest CROs on the planet. Mainly to know what works now and how they plan to stay ahead of the competition in the future.

With that said, 2017 was no exception. I’m excited to report that we had five world-class speakers in our lineup at the XANT Accelerate ’17 Executive Summit.

Get to know some of the sales leaders from different companies that had been invited to the summit. Before that, let’s first briefly define what a sales leader is and what qualities make a good sales leader.

What Is a Sales Leader and What Qualities Make for A Good Sales Leader?

Sales Leader Definition: A sales leader is an industry authority not only for their practical selling skills but also because of their exceptional influence over the world of sales and other sales professionals.

To make a great sales leader requires more than just generating revenue or a smart sales strategy. There are many skills that a sales team leader must have, some of them are listed below:

• They must have a visionary outlook.
• Making connections and learning from people is always an open possibility.
• Risk-taking and open-mindedness are also a part of their skillset.

All great leaders have their own leadership style, but there’s a standard set of skills that ties them together. All the speakers we chose for Inside Sales’ Accelerate ’17 Executive Summit possess these qualities of a sales leader.

The Executive Summit was an excellent chance for sales reps, sales managers, and more to receive some form of coaching from these industry leaders.

Anyone in a senior sales leadership position can benefit from attending events such as this, and can learn and network with various sales legends. Sales legends like the following, who attended the Inside Sales’ Accelerate ’17 Executive Summit:

1. Dan Page, VP of Sales Automation, ADP

Dan shared the ADP Sales Playbook that has helped them to achieve market dominance in the HR and payroll space.

ADP maintains a large inside sales team, and automation has been a key part of their amazing success.

Dan shared how big companies scientifically accelerate their sales in his presentation.

2. Tiffani Bova, Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce

Tiffani is a leading thinker in the areas of sales transformation and business model innovation. With that in mind, she shone a light on what’s next in sales in a presentation titled “Sales 2020: Shape the Future.”

Aside from speaking at summits, she travels the world meeting with sales leaders from some of the largest and most successful sales organizations. In her travels, she aims to uncover insights and best practices.

As a sales futurist, she focuses on new innovations in technology and selling that you can expect to see in the next few years.

3. Yusuf Tayob, Senior Managing Director, Accenture

Yusuf helps Accenture’s clients to achieve successful sales transformations. On that note, he addressed how you can manage change effectively in his presentation, “The Adoption Crisis: The Four Processes That Are Holding Companies Back.”

Large, global sales organizations rely on Yusuf’s expertise. With that in mind, he shared the best of what he has learned with CROs and senior sales leaders at the Accelerate ’17 Executive Summit.

RELATED: Top 25 Sales Leaders Award Winners

4. Ruben Sigala, EVP and CMO, Caesars Entertainment

You might expect a gaming company to use sophisticated analytics to surprise and delight its high-value VIP customers. If this is what you thought, then you’d be right.

Ruben and his team leverage data for many reasons. Mainly to drive sales and marketing efficiencies for one of the nation’s most recognizable entertainment brands.

At the 2017 executive summit at the Snowbird Ski Resort, he discussed the impact of AI on sales.

5. Kelly Kay, Managing Partner of the Global Software Practice, Heidrick & Struggles

Kelly has made a name for himself in the executive recruiting space. He is well known throughout the sales industry because he has matched many of the nation’s top CROs with game-changing companies.

As a speaker, he revealed how CROs can build high-performing teams. This discussion helped them not only keep their jobs but thrive in a fiercely competitive landscape.

Attendees learned best practices and networked with these high-profile speakers, as well as hundreds of other successful CROs and sales executives, at the Accelerate ’17 Executive Summit. The event took place Feb. 13-16 at the iconic Snowbird Ski Resort, nestled in Utah’s majestic Silicon Slopes.

Find out more about the event here.

Of course, they aren’t the only keynote speakers we had that day. Aside from the speakers listed above, we also had other esteemed guests on the list for the summit.

They covered a variety of other topics such as:

Unraveling The Sales Technology Stack

• Deron Frye, Senior Vice President of Sales from PGi
• Don Cash, Vice President of Global Inside Sales from BMC
• Jeff Skousen, Vice President of Corporate Sales from Domo

Next Era Selling: Selling Sales for Global Growth

• Aneke Seley, Founder, and CEO of Reality Works Group
• Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, President of New Relic

How to Find and Join the Right Board

• Arjun Gupta, Chief Believer, Founder, and Managing Partner of Telesoft Partners
• Dave Barrett, Managing Partner from Polaris
• Lars Leckie, Managing Director from Hummer Winblad

Creating Differentiation in Your Industry to Become the Leader

This segment will be presented and discussed by Kent Perkocha, Chief Customer Officer from Apttus.

All of these topics and sales advice were discussed during Accelerate ’17 by some of the best sales leaders active in different industries. It was a great opportunity to bring together sales professionals from various backgrounds and specializations to learn from and network with each other.

Which of the sales leaders or topics are you most interested in from the event? Let us know by leaving a comment down below!

Up Next:

• XANT To Host Online Sales Development Summit
• Amanda Holmes Teaches Time Management Secrets Of Billionaires
• Lead Response Infographic – How Many Touches To Make A Sale

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on January 2017, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

RELATED: 5 Life Lessons For The Entry Level Sales Professional

In this article:

1. Sales Professionals Need Humor in the Workplace Every Now and Then
   1. Sales Can Be Rough
   2. Competition Is Fierce
   3. Sometimes You Need a Getaway
   4. On Handling Rejection Graciously
   5. The Turn Down
   6. Misunderstandings Happen
   7. Sales Scaremongering
   8. The Go-to-Market Approach
   9. On Handling the Competition
   10. The Overzealous Salesman
   11. Make the Most of a Bad Situation
   12. How to Sell a Toothbrush
   13. When Your Skills Are Too Good for Your Own Good
   14. Mammoth Sales
   15. The Wish
   16. On the Inside
   17. The Saucer and the Cat
   18. The Orange Trout

Best Sales Jokes for Stress Relief

Sales Professionals Need Humor in the Workplace Every Now and Then

Sales can be an incredibly rewarding profession and boasts of high earnings and opportunities to travel. However, the sales life is not always easy as salespeople deal with rejection on a daily basis.

Between sky-high quotas and rude prospects, sales reps need to handle a lot of stress. In fact, in one Payscale survey, the account manager position was rated as the “second most stressful job.”

For some, funny images, memes, and gifs are a good way to unwind in-between presentations.  So if you’re having a bad day, take a look at our collection of best jokes with and about salespeople.

Sales Can Be Rough

Boss: Did you get any orders today?

Salesman: Yes, I got two!

Boss: Congratulations! What were they?

Salesman: “Get out!” and “Stay out!”

Source

Competition Is Fierce

How do salespeople traditionally greet each other?

“Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m better than you.”

Source

Sometimes You Need a Getaway

Getting away from their high-stress jobs, a couple spends relaxing weekends in their motor home. When they found their peace and quiet disturbed by well-meaning, but unwelcome, visits from other campers, they devised a plan to assure themselves some privacy.

Now, when they set up camp, they place this sign on the door of their RV:

“Insurance agent. Ask about our term-life package.”

Source

On Handling Rejection Graciously

A young door-to-door salesman was selling, off all things—burial plots. Upon the prospect responding that he already has a plot in another cemetery, the salesman decides to cut his losses and says: “I hope you’ll be very happy there…”

Source

RELATED: Cold Calling Secrets: How To Eliminate Fear, Failure, And Rejection

The Turn Down

A salesman approached a potential client and asked: “Would you like to buy a pocket calculator?” “No thanks,” the man replied. “I know how many pockets I have.”

Source

Misunderstandings Happen

A nun is undressing for a bath, and while she’s standing naked, there’s a knock at the door. The nun calls, “Who is it?”

A voice answers, “A blind salesman.”

The nun decides to get a thrill by having the blind man in the room while she’s naked so she lets him in. The man walks in, looks straight at the nun and says, “Uhhhh, well hello there, can I sell you a blind, dearie…?”

Source

Sales Scaremongering

Insurance agent in sales

Insurance agent to would-be client: “Don’t let me frighten you into a hasty decision. Sleep on it tonight. If you awake in the morning, give me a call then and let me know.”

Source

The Go-to-Market Approach

Two shoe salespeople were sent to Africa to open up new markets. Three days after arriving, one salesperson called the office and said, “I’m returning on the next flight. Can’t sell shoes here. Everybody goes barefoot.”

At the same time, the other salesperson sent an email to the factory, telling “The prospects are unlimited. Nobody wears shoes here!”

Source

On Handling the Competition

Three violin manufactures have all done business for years on the same block in the small town of Cremona, Italy.

After years of a peaceful co-existence, the Amati shop decided to put a sign in the window saying: “We make the best violins in Italy.”

The Guarneri shop soon followed suit, and put a sign in their window proclaiming: “We make the best violins in the world.”

Finally, the Stradivarius family put a sign out at their shop saying: “We make the best violins on the block.”

Source

The Overzealous Salesman

A door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman manages to bull his way into a woman’s home in a rural area.

“This machine is the best ever” he exclaims, whilst pouring a bag of dirt over the lounge floor.

The woman says she’s really worried it may not all come off, so the salesman says, “If this machine doesn’t remove all the dust completely, I’ll lick it off myself.”

“Do you want ketchup on it?” she says, “we’re not connected for electricity yet!”

Source

Make the Most of a Bad Situation

A real estate salesman had just closed his first deal, only to discover that the piece of land he had sold was
completely underwater.

“That customer’s going to come back here pretty mad,” he said to his boss. “Should I give him his money
back?”

“Money back?” roared the boss. “What kind of salesman are you? Get out there and sell him a houseboat.”

Source

How to Sell a Toothbrush

The top toothbrush salesman at the company was asked by his boss how he managed to sell so many brushes.

He replied “It’s easy” and he pulled out his card table, setting his display of brushes on top.

He told his boss, I lay the brushes out like this, and then I put out some potato chips and dip to draw in the customers. Then he laid out his chips and dip.

His boss said, “That’s a very innovative approach” and took one of the chips, dipped it, and stuck it in his mouth.

“Yuck, this tastes terrible!” his boss yelled.

The salesman replied “IT IS! Want to buy a toothbrush?”

Source

When Your Skills Are Too Good for Your Own Good

Patient: Doctor, you have to help me stop talking to myself.

Doctor: Why is that?

Patient: I’m a salesman and I keep selling myself things I don’t want.

Source

Mammoth Sales

Salesman: Roll up, roll up! Come to our mammoth sale. Mammoth bargains to be had in our mammoth sale.

Customer: Forget it! No one ’round here’s got room in their houses for a mammoth.

Source

The Wish

Magic genie beach bottle

A salesman walking along the beach found a bottle. When he rubbed it, a genie appeared.

“I will grant you two wishes” announced the genie. “But for every wish you make, your rival gets the wish as well — only double.”

The salesman thought about this. “For my first wish, I would like ten million dollars,” he said.

The genie instantly gave him a Swiss bank account number and assured the man that $10,000,000 had been deposited.  “But your rival has just received $20,000,000.” the genie said.

“Well,” said the salesman, “I’ve always wanted to donate a kidney for transplant”

Source 

On the Inside

A salesman was demonstrating unbreakable combs in a department store. He was impressing the people who stopped by to look by putting the comb through all sorts of torture and stress.

Finally, to impress even the skeptics in the crowd, he bent the comb completely in half, and it snapped with a loud crack. Without missing a beat, he bravely held up both halves of the ‘unbreakable’ comb for everyone to see and said, “And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what an unbreakable comb looks like on the inside.”

Source 

The Saucer and the Cat

A famous art collector is walking through the city when he notices a mangy cat lapping milk from a saucer in the doorway of a store and he does a double take. He recognizes that the saucer is extremely old and very valuable, so he walks casually into the store and offers to buy the cat for two dollars.

The store owner replies, “I m sorry, but the cat isn’t for sale. The collector says, “Please, I need a hungry cat around the house to catch mice. I’ll pay you twenty dollars for that cat.”

And the owner says “Sold,” and hands over the cat. The collector continues, “Hey, for the twenty bucks I wonder if you could throw in that old saucer. The cat’s used to it and it’ll save me from having to get a dish.”

And the owner says, “Sorry buddy, but that’s my lucky saucer. So far this week I’ve sold sixty-eight cats.”

Source 

The Orange Trout

Jim had an awful day fishing on the lake, sitting in the blazing sun all day without catching a single one. On his way home, he stopped at the supermarket and ordered four catfish. He told the fish salesman, “Pick four large ones out and throw them at me, will you?”

“Why do you want me to throw them at you?”

“Because I want to tell my wife that I caught them.”

“Okay, but I suggest that you take the orange trout.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because your wife came in earlier today and said that if you came by, I should tell you to take orange trout. That’s what she’d like for supper tonight.”

Source

While they don’t necessarily reflect reality, these sales jokes can definitely put a smile on a salesperson’s face and brighten up their day when they’re up to their necks with the pressures of work. We hope these funny sales jokes has reminded you of the lighter side of the industry and made you forget your stresses, even if only for a while.

What other sales jokes do you know? Share your favorite sales jokes with us in the comments section below!

UP NEXT:

• Best Ways to De-Stress for Salespeople
• 23 Motivational Sales Quotes To Fire You Up
• No More Sci-Fi Talk: 5 Things AI Can Do For Your Business Right Now

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on April 1, 2018, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

RELATED: 9 Best Predictive Dialers for Your Business

In this article:

1. What Is a Power Dialer?
2. Who Would Benefit the Most From a Power Dialer?
3. What Is a Predictive Dialer?
4. Who Would Benefit the Most From a Predictive Dialer?
5. Similarities Between a Power Dialer and a Predictive Dialer
6. Differences Between a Power Dialer and a Predictive Dialer

Power Dialer vs. Predictive Dialer| Which is Better For Your Sales Team?

Dialer Software Definition: These are tools that aid salespeople in automating some elements of call tasks. Sales dialers come in different types, such as power dialers and predictive dialers.

What Is a Power Dialer?

A power dialer enables salespeople to automatically call a prospect from a pre-set list of contacts. After the sales rep finishes the call, the power dialer will automatically dial another call on the way.

Depending on your choice of software, there could be additional features that can further develop the call process. Integrating your dialer to your CRM can give access to said features.

Other useful features that can be unlocked by CRM integration is the ability to pause between calls or show essential data on a lead you’re currently in a call with.

Who Would Benefit the Most From a Power Dialer?

A power dialer works best if you’re looking to add a more personal touch in your calls.

Personalization is a good move, especially for businesses that are yet to establish a strong reputation in their industry. Thus, a power dialer is ideal for small or medium-sized sales teams.

With the “pause feature,” agents can use the time to jot down notes about the prospect they just had a call with. This data will appear onscreen at a future date the next time a rep places another call to that prospect.

A power dialer will be a great fit for a growing business that’s just starting to build its own personal brand. The undeniable human touch of this dialer is precisely what they need to make their brand.

What Is a Predictive Dialer?

Using a predictive dialer to take calls

A predictive dialer dials multiple calls all at once to get the most number of calls possible. Once a prospect takes the call, it will hand it over to the sales rep.

The predictive dialer takes note of how many calls are answered among the multiple calls it dialed. From here, it can determine how many to dial to avoid idle time for the reps.

This dialer uses algorithms and historical data to quantify the likelihood of getting a response from a prospect. With the data in hand, it would then make the appropriate number of calls all at once to ensure at least one response.

A predictive dialer will call prospects even before there’s a rep available to take the call. They do this so reps can save on time normally spent on waiting for someone to pick up or leaving a voicemail. 

Who Would Benefit the Most From a Predictive Dialer?

A predictive dialer is best for businesses that have already established their brand.

Since this dialer doesn’t really offer opportunities to add a personal element to a call, agents won’t get the chance to add that human touch. With that said, a Predictive Dialer will best suit larger sales teams who are aiming for volume rather than personalization.

RELATED: 9 Ways A Predictive Dialer Can Increase Your Business

Similarities Between a Power Dialer and a Predictive Dialer

One thing that both dialers have is they help increase the number of calls a sales team can reach. When compared to the traditional way of calling prospects, the automation of dialers significantly speeds up the process.

Aside from that, the ability to integrate with CRM software is available for both dialers. This can allow users to access more features that can help develop the efficiency of their dialer.

Overall, both of them have similar goals: to enable sales reps to call as many prospects as possible and have as productive a call as they can. The differences between them lie heavily in the methods they use to try to reach these goals.

Differences Between a Power Dialer and a Predictive Dialer

A power dialer queues up a call after a call is done. On the other hand, a predictive dialer doesn’t wait for the call to end before dialing another number.

Another difference—a predictive dialer calls regardless of a rep’s availability, while a power dialer only dials another call once the current call has ended. Since predictive dialers “predict” the availability of agents, sometimes the prediction can go wrong, and prospects are left talking to no one on the other end of the call.

With power dialers, however, this won’t happen because reps are on-hold, meaning the dialer won’t dial any other calls, during the call process.

Predictive dialers can be more efficient because reps won’t be on-hold while waiting for someone to pick up at the other end of the line. On the other hand, Power dialers can be less efficient in the fact that they have to queue up each call for reps, even when they’re just waiting for the person on the other end of the line to pick up.

Sales dialers, like power dialers and predictive dialers, are powerful tools that, when executed right, can help increase productivity and efficiency of sales reps. Before incorporating a dialer into your sales processes, it’s essential to identify what you need from a dialer first.

If you need a more hands-on and personal approach to your calls, then it’s ideal to use a power dialer. If your primary purpose is to reach a large number of people, then a predictive dialer would probably be better.

Whichever you choose, just remember to consider your goals so you can ensure you can make the most of the sales dialer you’ll integrate into your sales team.

Which dialer do you think will be a better fit for your goals and organization? Why? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below. 

Up Next:

• 5 Best Practices To Deal With Phone Anxiety As A Sales Rep
• The Top 5 Voicemail Mistakes For Inside Sales Reps To Avoid
• 7 Advantages Of Using CRM Software

RELATED: Must Have Sales Management Software

Software for Sales | The Best Sales Software Systems for Your Business

Sales Software Definition: This refers to a tool that provides features that can assist salespeople in achieving various sales goals and other organizational objectives.

1.  Sales Hub by HubSpot

HubSpot’s Sales Hub software is one of the leading sales funnel software around. It comes in four pricing plans:

• Free
• Starter — $50/month
• Professional — $400/month
• Enterprise — $1,200/month

This sales management software is excellent for sales teams with no coding experience, with its intuitive interface making it really easy to use. They also provide real-time updates and a good customer support system.

HubSpot Sales can also connect seamlessly with HubSpot Marketing and HubSpot CRM. If you choose to use all three, you will have an easier time tracking the customer journey from the initial marketing process through to the sales process.

2. Pipedrive

Aside from HubSpot Sales, Pipedrive is also one of the leading sales software in the industry for a good reason. Compared to Sales Hub, it’s cheaper.

Here’s Pipedrive’s pricing plan:

• Silver — $12.50/month
• Gold — $24.20/month
• Platinum — $49.17/month

The plans are billed annually, and they’re way cheaper than Sales Hub. It also offers awesome features at these great price points.

Pipedrive makes software integration easier with its open application programming interface (API). Aside from that, this sales enablement software offers an excellent overview of all sales pipelines for easy reference.

3. Freshsales

Freshsales software

Freshsales is another excellent sales software that sales professionals can use, and it is relatively cheap as well. They have four billing plans, most of which can be billed monthly while the most expensive plan can only be billed annually.

This customer relationship management (CRM) and lead generation tool works best in managing and creating leads for you. It provides a detailed overview of each contact, ranging from lost or closed deals to conversations.

Aside from that, it scores your leads’ sales-readiness based on their profile. This gives users a higher chance of closing a deal.

4. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a sales tracking software that prides itself for its customizability so it can fit a variety of company needs and preferences.

This software also provides affordable pricing plans, which are cheaper when billed annually.

Zoho CRM offers different programming interfaces based on coding ability, such as “no-code,” “low-code,” and “high-level programming” to help users in developing third-party integrations. They also offer mobile integration with Zoho CRM Mobile Edition.

RELATED: 15 Sales Management Software and CRMs Used by Sales Teams

5. bpm’online sales

A great sales software system for mid-sized businesses that can help with sales processes is bpm’online sales. Bpm’online sales is one of many systems available under bpm’online’s CRM bundle.

It has three different pricing plans:

• Team — $25 a month per user
• Commerce —$30 a month per user
• Enterprise —$50 a month per user

This software shines the most in the lead management arena. It has an all-around view and information on leads, integrates information of leads based on social media, and assists them as they go through the entire sales process.

6. Brightpearl

Brightpearl is a great sales software for retail management, particularly those trading at $1 million or are looking to in the next 12 months. Prices are available when you request a quote.

Its most standout features are those for order and inventory management. It can inform users about real-time information on stock levels and help decide when to reorder based on historical data. It also automates accounting processes.

7. TradeGecko

Tradegecko sales software

If you are a wholesaler or a distributor looking for a great inventory management tool, then TradeGecko is a great sales tool for you.

It gives a centralized view of both customer and supplier information. TradeGecko can provide accurate customer insights based on historical data.

Aside from that, users can keep track of inventory across multiple channels and various processes.

This tool also makes it easier to produce sales reports. You can modify sales history reports based on either the product or variant, the customer, or even the sales representative. The same applies to the sales order reports.

No matter which sales software system you choose, it’s crucial that you take into account your business goals and needs. There isn’t a universal sales software that will fit all businesses, so it is essential to cross-reference and make use of free trials to know which software is best for you.

Which of these sales software systems have you used and have worked well for you? Let us know through the comments section below!

Up Next:

• Experiencing Artificial Intelligence in B2B Sales
• Is CRM Dead? How Sales Reps Can Get the Most Out of CRM
• Best Products for Sales 2019

The women’s scholarship program was initiated by XANT’s CEO and Founder, Dave Elkington, and it has been offering financial aid to gifted engineering students for four years. He was inspired to create the scholarships after he attended one of his daughter’s middle school science fairs — the scene was filled with girls, but by the time they reached junior high, most girls lost their interest in science.

“Thousands of technology positions go unfilled year after year, and things aren’t going to get better if we constantly exclude an entire demographic from the workforce in this industry. We need to change the mindset, that excludes women from STEM education and careers. We need to make a change and make sure the path is clear for talented women to have access to science education and to engineering positions,” said Dave Elkington, XANT CEO.

Companies all across the US are struggling to keep up with the need for IT and software specialists. The 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study (GISWS) predicted as many as 1.8 million IT jobs could be unfilled by 2022. Tapping into the pool of women in the workforce would help fill some of these positions, but there is still much to be done in this respect.

Private companies like XANT are attempting to fill the gap by offering free programming classes for young girls or scholarships for women in the STEM field.

Scholarships Opening Up Possibilities for Female Students

We caught up with two of the scholarship’s beneficiaries from 2018, Sara Adamson and Kathryn Rasmussen at XANT, where they are currently working on technology projects. They both feel like the scholarship has opened up new possibilities for them.

“Everything I was learning in school I applied here. I also feel like a lot of things I was learning on my internship I was then able to apply to my classes. It worked out really well. It was a cycle where I was learning in class, applying the internship, and then in turn improving my skills. I’ve also learned a lot of things that you just don’t learn at school,” said Kathryn, a software engineer.

The scholarship helped by offering financial aid and freed up time for study. Data shows that around 40% of undergrads work to pay for tuition. Sara was able to get ahead of her school work, with the help of the XANT scholarship program.

“I actually ended up graduating an entire year earlier because I was able to double the load and take more classes. Because I didn’t have to take care of the income, I had more time to dedicate to school. That was really nice,” said Sara.

Sparking Curiosity in Women about STEM

What made these young women stand out and want to pursue a career in computer science? The motivation and context might be different, but they are both moved by one common denominator — curiosity about how they can solve problems.

Kathryn has three siblings who also have a passion for computer science, two have graduated and one is studying software development. She is soft spoken and seems a bit shy at first – but when talking about computer science, her face lights up.

“I love how programming combines logic with creativity because there’s so many ways you can figure out how to solve a problem,” said Kathryn.

Sara loved computers ever since she was little. “I was constantly asking my parents about how things worked in computers, I was just super curious about it. I wanted to do computer engineering but the school that I initially went to didn’t have a computer engineering program. So I tried computer science and I liked it,” recalls Sara.

What Glass Ceiling?! Oh, This One…

While there’s been volumes written about the glass ceiling that women face in business, as well as in STEM fields, the girls say it’s not been the most difficult problem they had to face. But rather, wrestling with concepts like understanding recursion, fighting network latency, and making the tech-stack as smart as they are.

Both girls remarked that having a group of peers who were supportive and good teachers provided a solid foundation  to help them overcome any gender issues that might have come up. “I kind of knew what I was getting into, because I had heard my siblings talk about it, how there’s very few girls and a lot of guys, so I was prepared for that. I also had some really great teachers and a good group of friends, and we just liked software engineering. That was more important than the fact that I was a girl,” said Kathryn.

Sara agreed and added that even with a strong support system, things in computer science can be challenging because sometimes her male counterparts had difficulty understanding what young women in computing go through.

“In college, I was in a group called the Society of Women Engineers. We constantly hosted activities for all the female and male engineers. Coincidentally, males almost never came. I particularly remember one of my dear friends who was a male, he came to one of our meetings and I noticed that he left really quickly after the meeting started. I asked him about it the next day, I said, “Hey, why’d you leave so fast?” He said: “I don’t know, I just felt so awkward. I was the only guy there and I just didn’t really have anything to talk about.” So I said, “Hmm, that’s how we feel.” But I just remember the look on his face as he realized, “Wait a second, that’s what it must feel like to be you…”

Even though being a female in computing can be difficult, there is still hope. Sara advises any young woman looking for a career in computer science to be confident and have faith that everything is going to work out. “Your future and your success is up to you, and that’s for boys and girls alike. The only person that can make a difference in your future is you,” said Sara.

Applying STEM Education to the Real World

Both grant beneficiaries are happy to have landed positions at XANT, the leader in Artificial Intelligence for sales. The software company produces a platform that allows sales teams to maximize productivity and increase revenue through Collective Intelligence insights about buyers.

“I work on the back end doing API integrations and I really like what I do here. I also like front end development, creating the UI, making things look pretty. It’s really fun and challenging, too,” said Sara.

They are both looking forward to improving their programming skills, as they continue to work in the field. Although they say public schools have offered little opportunities for learning computer science, university seems to have leveled the playing field.

“I took the programming classes at BYU, and I loved how they give you a set of tools and you can find a solution to the problem,” said Kathryn.

“When I was in high school, I wouldn’t have known where to start. Now for me, when I become a parent, I will know exactly how to help my kids get started. There’s a lot of resources,” said Sara.

The Do Good Organization – Setting the Foundation for Women’s STEM Education

The Do Good Organization from XANT awards scholarships to women majoring in computer science undergrads at Utah universities.

The scholarship program awards students from Brigham Young University (BYU), University of Utah, and Utah Valley University to pay half their tuition for one year.

In addition, each winner receives the opportunity to apply for a paid summer internship at InsideSales, which includes the opportunity to work on a tween girls’ coding camp, dubbed Girls Code. XANT offers the camp and scholarships annually.

Learn more about the Do Good Organization.

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Read part one of the Cloud Data Wars here.

Wall Street got it wrong when it comes to Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn. They said it was “one pricey deal.” Analysts reported that $26.B was a “50% premium over LinkedIn’s closing price,” citing “79x EBITDA” and “8 times sales.” Despite the fact that both Salesforce and Microsoft were bidding at these levels, Wall Street widely lambasted Microsoft for overpaying.

More recently, Wall Street had priced the Qualtrics IPO at $4.5B, until SAP scooped it up for $8B–representing a 78% premium and the largest enterprise software acquisition in history.  What does industry understand that Wall Street does not?

In the early 2000s, private Industry also saw something Wall Street did not.  Venture valuations of subscription-based software companies skyrocketed, while Wall Street struggled to see the magic of SaaS. Silicon Valley had no interest in backing perpetual license business models and switched “cold turkey” to subscription-based SaaS, but public investors took their time understanding and embracing the difference. 

Now we are seeing the same divergence of valuation related to data-centric companies.  LinkedIn and Qualtrics are two examples of data-centric companies being acquired for far more than public multiples would justify. But these are not anomalies. There is a wave of data-centric companies being valued by venture investors in a way that defies Wall Street valuations.  

In our first article about the Cloud Data Wars, we highlighted the current battles to assemble B2B data. We outlined the multi-billion-dollar bets being made by Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, Adobe, and SAP on data acquisition. We also defined “Collective Intelligence” to mean insights derived from data collected on customers across multiple companies. The challenge of AI in B2B companies is a lack of data. No single company has enough data to make accurate and granular recommendations about the future, and when they do, it’s only based on their own history. B2B needs cross-company data for AI to be powerful.

So Which Data are Most Valuable?

If it’s true Wall Street doesn’t have a unified approach to valuing Cloud Data, but Cloud Data is worth $billions to tech juggernauts, how do we bridge the understanding gap? The key is to understand which data are valuable and why. From there we can build a model.  

All data are not created equal. Collecting data–lots of it–and analyzing it has become easier and easier with tools like Redshift, Hadoop, Cloudera, Azure ML, Apache Spark, etc. But more data is not necessarily better. Far more “big data” initiatives have been launched than have produced actionable intelligence. And in a world where Collective Intelligence rules, the type of data one has access to is paramount.

Consider the following analogy (adapted from submission by Rick Smith, president at Techcyte):

Suppose a grocery chain has kept track of what shelf they store their peanut butter on for the last 10 years for all 100 stores. A store manager then approaches an AI company to predict the best place to put the peanut butter to maximize sales. There is a lot of “big data,” so he assumes good predictions should be easy. Right? No. The first thing the AI company will request is all of the peanut sales data for the same period.  Oops! Somehow that was never stored anywhere. Collecting the right data for one year would have been better than collecting the wrong data for 10 years.

Cloud Data in B2B Sales

Let’s apply that to a B2B sales situation. If we want to optimize decisions to affect better outcomes, we must define the rules of the road:

• What is success?  
  • In the peanut butter example, success = peanut butter sales
  • For our B2B example let’s say that success = closed sales, measured in dollars
• What levers are under our control?
  • In the peanut butter example, the relevant lever is shelf placement
  • For our B2B example let’s say the lever is “who to call?”

Now we can search for data that help us choose which leads to call such that we can close more sales. Data valuable to this analysis display certain characteristics:

• Collective Intelligence or cross-company. If we want information about who to call, we can consider people we’ve called in the past, or we can consider “all the people.” If we want the best people, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to data about only the people in our own history.
• Behavioral, with outcomes. We need data on an action we have control of, correlated with the outcome we are optimizing for.
• Evergreen. Data has currency, and its value attenuates with time. The best data is refreshed continuously, ideally through some sort of passive crowdsourcing.

In our B2B sales example, if we could observe every conversation with every prospect, along with the outcomes of those conversations, we could use that information to predict the outcome of calls to certain types of people and recommend more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

Where else could this apply (theoretically)?

1. Best method of contact
2. Best frequency of contact
3. Best collateral to present
4. Best price to present
5. Best purchasing team to assemble

We predict that companies will store more data, not less, over time.  We assert that the right data to store follows a CIBE framework (Collective Intelligence, Behavioral (with outcomes), Evergreen.  

A New Approach to Enterprise Data Architecture

Collecting data like these systematically requires a fundamentally different way of thinking about enterprise data architecture. If you were able to rebuild enterprise data architecture, how would you do it?

We suggest that you would most likely build it the same way the Internet was built. Today’s prevalent enterprise data architecture pre-dates the Internet. We inherited it from old client-server data architectures that were lifted and shifted into the cloud.  As such, all silos and partitions of yesteryear still exist.

But if we had a chance to re-do data architecture for enterprises, we would build it such that the more people who use it, the more valuable it becomes for each participant. This is how the Internet works. When Amazon tells you that “people who bought X also bought Y,” it’s not because you bought Y–it’s because other people bought Y. Each of us benefits from patterns contributed by other users of the same Internet.  When you log in to Netflix and are presented with a few screens of suggested titles, what percentage of Netflix’s catalog is being presented?  The answer–6.5%. And these titles are carefully selected, not because you’ve already watched them, but because other people with viewing patterns similar to you watched them and enjoyed them.  The Internet works such that the more people who use it, the more valuable it is for all of us.  Enterprise data architecture can and will begin to mimic this structure over time. But unfortunately for us, that is not true today.

The way our enterprise architectures are built, we can only see what our own company has experienced in its own history. We can’t see any possibilities outside our four walls. So if we are looking for a way to chart an optimal course into our future, the data set we have access to fundamentally limits us.

That will change. As our ability to manage massive amounts of data improves, while still honoring data privacy, protecting personally identifiable information, and operating with the bounds of GDPR, we will continue to see data and data patterns co-mingled across enterprises and customer sets, much the way the Internet does it today.

Conclusion

Some forward-looking enterprise software companies have already architected their solutions in such a way as to produce this very type of collective intelligence. Eight billion dollars is the largest ever acquisition of an enterprise software company to date (Qualtrics acquired by SAP). Bill McDermott–SAP’s CEO–outlined the strategy of this acquisition as being related to getting the X and O data into the same place (X= customer experience data, O= operational data). McDermott called this the biggest idea of his career, and he made a massive bet on it.

But that $8bn record will be shattered. And it will be shattered by another company that systematically collects, organizes, and analyzes data across traditional corporate boundaries. Companies like Clearbit, Infer, Bombora and InsideSales are already doing this. New entrants will also race to the top of the food chain to the extent they build their data architectures to be collective, behavioral, and evergreen.

And when these and other companies outperform their peers, don’t be surprised. Just as early SaaS companies outperformed their premise-based peers, this new breed of enterprise software companies will also set a new standard. These are the data pioneers, positioning themselves to win in the Cloud Data Wars.