How can market intelligence help your sales and business development?
This article asks how market intelligence can help your sales and business development and explains five ways you can compete against your competitors’ offers and claims.
Your sales and business development teams are on the front line of your business battle, and giving them as much cover as possible is essential. Market intelligence offers them answers when pinned down by your competitor’s features, claims and pricing strategies. Being on the front line, they speak to customers and prospects all the time, and they usually get to hear an unbiased view of your service and that of your competitors.
So here are 5 ways Market Intelligence help your sales and business development.
1. Identify their customers
Could we give you a list of your competitor’s customers? Would you find this valuable? Identifying competitor customers is something you can do with Market Intelligence. You will be amazed by what you can work out. And all legal, above-board and ethical. Great for prospecting for your sales teams, but it also builds a picture of the types of companies your competitors are chasing. And which companies they are avoiding and why? Does it reveal the strengths and weaknesses of its products or services? Sometimes, the information you can generate from competitive intelligence about rival customers is jaw-dropping.
2. Information
How about providing your sales teams with accurate, timely and up-to-date information to offer counter-arguments and go on the offensive with buyers and decision-makers? Having this knowledge at their fingertips will help them understand what your competitors will be telling them. And play to your strengths in offering, features, benefits, and pricing, which counter competitor strengths. The information will dilute what they are hearing from your competitors.
3. Expose their claims
What are your competitors telling buyers in their sales meetings? What’s going on in their company? Competitor statements and sales presentations reveal priceless information about their capabilities and weaknesses. Dig deeper and find out what they think of your strengths and their fears about your company. Not surprisingly, these messages and signals will differ from what they tell the world on their website.
Market Intelligence will help you understand your competitive landscape and increase wins and sales.
4. Understand customer needs and motivations
You don’t need to be in business for long to find out people are unreliable and change their minds. We focus on buying one product, falling in love with it, and seeing something else we like. Suddenly, the initial shiny new toy had too many limitations, and you buy the last one you see. Sales teams need more than just hearsay, comments on CRM notes and surveys
Market Intelligence gets to the bottom of it all, so your senior and sales teams know precisely why customers make individual buying decisions. What was their experience of buying from you, what were their motivations, and how happy are they with their decision now? Build the picture, and your sales teams can confidently sell, knowing what the prospect wants and how they intend to decide. Use the Win-Loss analysis as discussed next to create a more qualitative and consistent process.
5. Win-Loss Analysis
If you don’t ask why they didn’t buy from you, how do you expect to find out the answer?
It’s easy to ignore the real reason for failure and success. But you must get to the bottom of your customer’s decision-making process. To know how the market sees you. Why you are missing out, and just as importantly, why you are winning customers. Also, which competitors are getting the better of you? And most importantly, why?
A win-loss analysis is a powerful intelligence tool that allows you to see trends and patterns early. So you can either keep doing what you are doing or do something else to get back on course.
Does market intelligence help your sales teams?
This article was called how can market intelligence help your sales teams? It discussed how to use Market Intelligence to compete against the offers and claims of your competitors.
We are Octopus. The Global People-Powered Competitive Intelligence Agency.
Outsmart your competition. Make the unknown known. Octopus helps you gain clarity in complex markets. With clients and tentacles around the world, we deliver sharp, actionable competitive intelligence through a blend of deep primary (HUMINT) and secondary research. If you’re looking to make smarter decisions, beat the competition, and reduce uncertainty, we’re the partner you want on your side.
