Knowing more about your customers can improve sales

”I know too much about my customers and leads” - said no sales and marketing professional ever. Not knowing enough is what keeps us up at night and creates problems like:

• the lost sale because a competitor positioned their product successfully as the answer to the customer’s pain points,
• the missed up-selling opportunity because you didn’t realize that the customer’s need had evolved, or
• the lackluster click-through rate of your email campaign because it was too generic or focused on the wrong information.

With no disagreement about the fact that knowing more about your customers is better the question becomes how to find, collect, keep track of relevant information and how share it with your cross-functional colleagues.

From a technology tools perspective, the answer is straight-forward: your CRM system is the logical choice; customers, contacts, leads, opportunities, activities and campaigns are all already tracked in your CRM. Any additional information that enriches these profiles should also be captured in the CRM, else you will end up with two separate systems that require constant toggling back and forth.

From a data perspective the ideal scenario is to access all information from a one-stop information shop type database that contains the data you need to develop a deep profile of your customers. That information could include recent publications, grant or industry funding, or talks they have given. Working with disparate information sources all but guarantees that important information ends up in Excel spreadsheets, a pile of loose notes on a co-worker’s desk, or in somebody’s head rather than your CRM.

The perfect solution, therefore, would be a way to access a comprehensive database that contains deep information about your customers, prospects and leads and comes with an easy, automated way to integrate this information with the proprietary information you collected in your CRM.

The best of both worlds: proprietary data in your CRM plus deep profile information

Here are seven ways a solution that integrates your CRM with a comprehensive database containing detailed professional information about your customers, prospects and leads can support your sales and marketing efforts:

• Functions such as sales, marketing, business development, customer support and even product development benefit from deep profiling customers, prospects and leads. More comprehensive information enables cross- and up-selling, allows for highly targeted and relevant communication and can help your product team with identifying latent customer needs.
• Especially important is the ability to see a customer’s network based on their publications and other joint activities. Consider this scenario: one of your prospects has collaborated with an existing customer. You can now approach that prospect with a targeted solution and an introduction such as ”We have sold this solution to Dr. Smith, who uses it for a similar application and is very happy with it.” While understanding network connections is most relevant for sales efforts, the information can also be used to identify possible new beta testers and might suggest new applications and target markets for your products.
• More detailed knowledge about your customers makes interactions with them more meaningful and compelling because you can proactively offer up information or introduce new products based on that knowledge. Take an up-selling scenario: if the sales rep goes into a discussion with a customer knowing – based on a recent publication – what type of work the product was used for, they can position the latest upgrade in context and with that in a much more compelling way than presenting a list of features and benefits ever can.
• The combination of proprietary data, e.g. closes, close rate, win/loss rate, opportunity to close rate coupled with extensive customer profile and activity information allows you to develop ideal target customer profiles or personas and with that to improve sales process management. The enriched profiles can be used to streamline the sales process by focusing on prospects that closely resemble those ideal customers.
• A comprehensive database gives you a powerful tool to learn more about those market participants you don’t know well and might identify an opening for you to contact them with a compelling offer.
• Drive CRM adoption, we all know that your field-based team isn’t always the most diligent when it comes to updating the CRM. After all, there is always something better to do than data entry. A CRM that contains actionable information and insights might just be the incentive needed to drive broader and more enthusiastic adoption of the CRM.
• Last but not least: comprehensive information about leads convey a significant competitive advantage. Just ask yourself: would you want to compete against a team that has this information available at their fingertips while yours has to spend significant resources to painstakingly capture that data and add it to the CRM where it will be outdated in a short time? Or rather: would you want to compete with a team that has this level of data and insight while you don’t?

Having deep, up-to-date profile information available in your CRM provides a 360-degree view of the customer, makes interactions more meaningful and compelling, helps identify and engage new leads and can shorten the sales cycle.

The solution: Monocl Connect

The good news is: such a solution exists. It’s called Monocl Connect and is part of the Monocl product suite. The Monocl expert database contains deep profiles of researchers, scientists, experts, and healthcare providers worldwide. It captures information such as publications, board positions, affiliation, payments, specialty, speaking engagements, Twitter presence and network information.

You can now add the wealth of information contained in Monocl directly to your CRM to create a powerful repository of information about everyone in your sales funnel. What makes this tool unique is its ability to combine the proprietary information you have collected in your CRM with the information contained in Monocl. The resulting deep profiles and insights are available to cross-functional teams and can inform everything from the messaging and targeting of your marketing campaigns to sales calls, prospecting, product development and business development.

You can find more information about Monocl here.

If you would like to discuss how to use Monocl’s products in your company, please reserve some time with one of the Monocl team members.