One of the biggest challenges with competitive intelligence (CI) is getting sales teams to engage with and use briefings or reports. If you aren’t careful to curate only the most relevant information for sales then you will lose their attention almost immediately. They aren’t interested in the same type or depth of intelligence as product, or even marketing teams.
Sales professionals are only interested in receiving highly targeted intelligence – ideally presented in a concise briefing, battlecard or other reporting format. In order to get the most engagement from sales on key intelligence, here are three tips that our clients have implemented with great success.
- Develop Curated Briefings Customized with Sales Intelligence
When it comes to sales intelligence, we’ve found that there are specific categories that really matter the most: sales wins, customer reviews, pricing, sales presentations, RFPs and new product releases. By focusing daily or weekly briefings on these core categories, you significantly increase engagement from sales. Of course, there are going to be deviations for different sales professionals based on their area of focus, target prospects, etc.
The best way to accommodate more specific interests or needs by person is to offer Customizable Briefings. For example, CI Radar provides clients with the option to deliver curated daily briefings that are customized by each subscriber based on a set list of categories, companies, topics and more. Our clients who have implemented custom briefings have significantly increased engagement from sales teams because they have the ability to choose their own intelligence updates.
- Integrate Sales Intelligence into CRM Systems
What better way to get sales reps to really interact with and use CI than to put it in the CRM system that they use every day? A number of outsourced CI services offer integrations with systems like Salesforce, enabling you to embed competitor data within existing account or competitor profiles.
For many of our clients security is a major potential roadblock for a solution like this, which is why we’ve provided a flexible integration that gives full power to Salesforce Admins to implement the process without security risks. The clients we’ve worked with who use our Salesforce Integration have reported great success. They’ve found that placing the most relevant intelligence within profiles that are easily accessible, reduces the burden on sales enablement and gives salespeople the ammo to close more deals.
- Create Feedback Loops
In order to deliver the right sales intelligence at the right time, it helps to get consistent feedback from reps. This makes them feel more involved in the process and gives you constant insight into the types of information they crave and ignore. Inviting them into conversations about how information is gathered and how they can contribute intelligence they are hearing from the field is helpful for sustaining a successful CI program.
One way to do this is to put out a monthly or quarterly survey to the sales team. Another option that works well is to meet on a semi-regular basis and discuss strengths and weaknesses of your current program. Regardless of whether you go the more formal route or choose an informal feedback loop, this is one very important step toward delivering sales intelligence that is consistently used to inform strategy and decision making for your sales team.
If you are interested in learning more about CI Radar’s competitive intelligence solutions for sales teams, request a demo today!