December 2013

White Paper on Improving

SalesIntelligence

2
WHITE PAPER ON IMPROVING SALES INTELLIGENCE | DECEMBER 2013

CONTENTS

Overview 3
Evaluation methodology of the vendors

Vendor evaluation parameters

Implementation best practices

Benefits 6
Conclusion 7
About the Authors

About HCL

2013, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

3
WHITE PAPER ON IMPROVING SALES INTELLIGENCE | DECEMBER 2013

OVERVIEW
Better to arrive late and ready, than early and unprepared
Successful sales professionals realize the importance of know before
yougo across all sales scenarios including cold calling, solution/ product
demonstrations, meetings and negotiations.
Business Situation
The focus of most successful sellers has shifted from receiving basic
information about companies and people, to accessing the track record
and gaining a perspective on the business prospects of organizations in
real-time.
Sales Intelligence refers to the information, which helps sales
professionals understand their prospects/ customers better, customize
their conversations as per situation, and demonstrate understanding of
the business context.

EVALUATION METHODOLOGY OF THE VENDORS

A number of vendors (Hoovers, OneSource, Inside view, Data.com)
provide Sales Intelligence. Therefore, it is important to conduct an
objective evaluation using the following approach before finalizing on
a vendor:
Define the business problem & the business case: It is important
to define the business problem which may be lengthening sales cycles
due to unavailability of accurate information on prospects. Similarly,
declining bookings may be due to poor insight into the business
needs of the prospects or it may be attributable to lack of competitor
information.
Short list vendors using industry research/ analysts such as
Gartners magic quadrant: Vendors fall into two categories: one set
of vendors are data providers and the other set are process integrated
data providers providing customized data as per the sales processes.
Therefore, it is important to short list vendors according to the
business need.
Objective evaluation of vendors against defined parameters:
(Details are mentioned in the Vendor evaluation parameters
section.)
Involve users in vendor evaluation by giving trail licenses: Involve
power users who will run different use cases and help in checking the
accuracy of data provided by the vendors.
Optimize the sales intelligence platform across the organization:
In a large enterprise, teams may be using different Sales Intelligence
systems; consequently, it important to consolidate these databases
and systems to improve efficiency and reduce cost.
Objective evaluations of vendors against defined parameters:
According to a study conducted by the Aberdeen Group, competitor
and customer intelligence, and company hierarchies are important Sales
Intelligence parameters. Refer Figure 1.
2013, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

4
WHITE PAPER ON IMPROVING SALES INTELLIGENCE | DECEMBER 2013

50%
40%

Percentage of respondents

40%

38%

38%

36%

34%

30%

26%

20%

10%

0%
Competiive
Intelligence

Customer
Intelligence

Company
Hierarchy

Basic
Company
Information

Basic
"Business
Card"
Information

Trigger
Events

All Companies
Source: Aberdeen Group, April 2012

n = 215

Figure 1: Important Sales Intelligence parameters

By assigning scores to the parameters given in the worksheet below, a

cumulative score can be arrived at and this can be used for objective
evaluation of vendors.

VENDOR EVALUATION PARAMETERS

Vendor
Vendor 1
Vendor 2
Parameter 1category = Prospect & Contact Overview
Parameter Weightage
High
Company Insights Newsfeed

Contact Insights Newsfeed

F500 tag/ G2000 Tag

Live Updates

Financial Analysis

SWOT Analysis

Latest Industry Activity

Parameter 2 category = Prospect &Contact Deep Insights

Parameter Weightage
Medium
New Offerings

Acquisitions

Partnerships

Expanding Operations

Fillings

Company Data Changes ( Profit, Asset, Revenue)

Funding Developments

Bankruptcy & Restructuring

Social Insights

Exec in News Insights

2013, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

5
WHITE PAPER ON IMPROVING SALES INTELLIGENCE | DECEMBER 2013

Parameter 3 category = Integration/Automation Details

Parameter Weightage
High
Native CRM Integration

Integration with Account Module

Integration with Lead Module

Integration with Contact Module

Integration with Opportunity Module

Automatic Watchlists (email notification on

specific account events)

Import Contacts

Import Accounts

Prospect List Creation

Key facts
85% best-in-class companies use external social intelligence
75% deploy a sales-focused, centralized repository of account, contact
and opportunity information.

IMPLEMENTATION BEST PRACTICES

Integration with Sales Force automation platform: Sales
Intelligence should be integrated with Sales Force automation
platform/ CRM because, the data is enriched with information
such as Company summary, Financial statement, Analyst report, IT
profile, Corporate family, Industry report, Competitor report, New
offerings, Acquisitions, Partnerships, Expanding operations, Fillings,
Latest industry activity, Competitors Peers analysis from external
sources. This will reduce the time spent on searching for information
from various sources and help sales professionals prepare for meetings
by providing a 360-degree view of accounts and contacts.
Implementation timelines: Most of the database services are Cloudbased, and hence providers require 1-2 weeks for implementation.
Integration with sales processes: In order to promote Sales
Intelligence usage, it is important to ensure that the account manager
extracts the information and uses it for opportunity qualification and
to enrich account/ contact information.
Automated data flow to CRM: Most CRMs have the capability
to create accounts/ contacts automatically and data vendors should
enable this feature to improve the productivity of sales professionals.
Selection of power users: Sales Intelligence enablement involves
investments. Therefore, it is important to identify and provide access
to high performing sales professionals.Organization wide rollout
can be considered once access is enabled for power users and ROI is
realized.
Executive sponsorship: Strong support from the leadership is
required for users to adopt the change.

2013, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

6
WHITE PAPER ON IMPROVING SALES INTELLIGENCE | DECEMBER 2013

Change management: Leverage targeted user awareness campaigns

using multiple communications, and end user training, to make sales
professionals realize the value of Sales Intelligence.

BENEFITS
Some of the major benefits realized through a Sales Intelligence system
are:
Enriches quality of leads available in the pipeline, which increases the
volume of opportunities
Increases sales velocity as sales professionals are well equipped to meet
specific business challenges of prospects
Enriches the value of the opportunity by keeping sales professionals
updated on crucial metrics such as customer behavior, competitor
activity and booking pattern
Improves efficiency of sales professionals by mapping products and
services to the business challenges of the prospect
Enhances the effectiveness of sales professionals by enabling them to
speak intelligently about the competition and differentiators during
the sales process
One of the important benefits of Sales Intelligence is improved
productivity. On an average, a sales professional spends 4 hours researching
customer/ competitor data. This means 190-210 hours/ person/ year
is spent on non-productive activities. With a CRM integrated Sales
Intelligence product, a sales professional can improve his productivity
by using these hours to bring more business to an organization.
Other benefits include improving knowledge of territory/
industry/ accounts, which leads to more educated, consultative
conversations and identification of high-value prospects through trigger
events.

2013, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

7
WHITE PAPER ON IMPROVING SALES INTELLIGENCE | DECEMBER 2013

CONCLUSION
In todays competitive selling environment, consultative guidance
provided by sales professionals plays an important role in closing the
sale. It involves building relationships with prospects and understanding
their business context. This implies that sales professionals need to bring
all the pieces of the sales puzzle together, including company insights,
contact details, hierarchies, open opportunities, current events, mergers,
and new product launches. However, this meant that sales professionals
had to spend more time on researching and gathering information from
multiple sources and less time meeting prospects.
Consequently, winning organizations have realized the value of
integrating Sales Intelligence with an internal CRM system. This is
an ideal and efficient way for sales professionals to gain deep insights,
aggregate accurate information, receive real-time updates and enable
them to spend more time on selling, than on searching and surfing
theweb.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Apurva Chamaria is a part of VineetNayarsVice Chairman,
HCLTechnologies office, and heads DFO (Digital Front Office), &
Brand. He specializes in Business Strategy, Sales and Marketing Strategy
& Operations, Account Management and Client Servicing, Brand
Management & Integrated Marketing Communications. He can be
reached at apurvachamaria@hcl.com
Gaurav Kakkar is a part of the HCL Corporate Marketing team and
leads the Sales & Marketing process excellence team. He specializes
in designing Sales & Marketing processes and getting those enabled
through systems, His other areas of interest are CRM platforms,
Change management & Product management. He can be reached at
gaurav.kakkar@hcl.com
2013, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

8
WHITE PAPER ON IMPROVING SALES INTELLIGENCE | DECEMBER 2013

ABOUT HCL
About HCL Technologies
HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company working
with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their
businesses. Since its emergence on global landscape after its IPO in
1999, HCL has focused on transformational outsourcing, underlined
by innovation and value creation, offering an integrated portfolio of
services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure
management, engineering and R&D services and Business services.
HCL leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network
of offices in 31 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in
key industry verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing,
Consumer Services, Public Services and Healthcare & Life sciences.
HCL takes pride in its philosophy of Employees First, Customers
Second which empowers its 87,196 transformers to create real value
for the customers. HCL Technologies, along with its subsidiaries,
had consolidated revenues of US$ 4.8 billion, as on September
30th 2013 (on LTM basis). For more information, please visit
www.hcltech.com
About HCL Enterprise
HCL is a $6.3 billion leading global technology and IT enterprise
comprising two companies listed in India HCL Technologies and
HCL Infosystems. Founded in 1976, HCL is one of Indias original
IT garage start-ups. A pioneer of modern computing, HCL is a global
transformational enterprise today. Its range of offerings includes product
engineering, custom & package applications, BPO, IT infrastructure
services, IT hardware, systems integration, and distribution of
information and communications technology (ICT) products across
a wide range of focused industry verticals. The HCL team consists of
over 90,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, who operate from
31 countries including over 500 points of presence in India. HCL has
partnerships with several leading global 1000 firms, including leading IT
and technology firms. For more information, please visit www.hcl.com

2013, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.