Your partner marketing software throws open a big door into the prospect's world, allowing businesses to be a part of their customer's/prospect's daily lives ever so inconspicuously. Thanks to prospect data, companies no longer have to rely on 'gut instincts' and guesses but are instead able to take well-informed marketing and sales decisions that actually pay off. Every interaction the prospect has with a business and its channel partners sales teams, offers an insight into the prospect's mindset. Every download, every click, every form-sign-up matters as it helps companies understand their prospects better. Your partner marketing software gathers prospect data from all sources, including social media, web searches, point of sale systems, online shopping cart check-outs and even in-store (physical presence) activities to draw a complete picture of prospect preferences—in real-time.
Thanks to the internet and smartphones, that make information available on-the-go to the prospects, companies are now dealing with empowered prospects, who are more informed than ever before. For companies, keeping up with such prospects requires being able to engage them across multiple channels, in real-time, and the right use of prospect data offers this opportunity.
Capturing prospect data and understanding your prospects offers tremendous scope for cross-selling and up-selling.
However, though a lot of information is being collected, companies are grappling with trying to make sense of this data dump and to use it intelligently. Successful companies would be the ones who are able to make their prospect data actionable and use it to build a personal relationship with their prospects and clients. This would involve—
Collecting prospect information from all the different sources available; both online and offline
As discussed before, prospects are sharing information about themselves and their preferences at every interaction with the company. It is important to gather this data from every source, in every form and stage—in real time.
With data flowing in across different media, it becomes essential to organize the information in a unified format so it can be used further.
In order to be able to use the information intelligently, the data has to be segmented and analyzed and then made actionable.
Once prospect data is made actionable, the next step is to take the right set of actions based on the data. Use this data to increase prospect/customer engagement with the business. This involves making the right kind of content available to the prospects based on the data collected. Relevant whitepapers, e-books, follow-up emails and individualized pricing discounts are all examples of relevant content delivery based on intelligent prospect data analysis. By providing prospects with relevant content, you are sending across the message that you know your prospects and you care about their preferences. Thus making prospect data actionable offers companies the golden opportunity to create strong personal relationships with their prospects and to build trust.
In the B2B world, right use of prospect and partner data can improve partner engagement Relying on channel partners to grow your business presents a unique set of challenges. These include competing with other vendors for your channel partner's attention and dealing with multiple channel partners who bring their own set of strengths and weaknesses into your business. Organizations understand the importance of channel engagement. However, attaining the desired channel engagement level is an elusive goal for most of them. Making prospect and partner data actionable in the B2B sphere can benefit companies by improving the channel engagement metrics.
Partner data can help you gauge how the channel partners interact with your business. Insight into their activities such as whitepaper downloads, email opens, website visits, certifications sought, webinars attended—all offer you a deeper realization of your channel partner's commitment to your business. Understanding the channel engagement index allows vendors to take informed channel partner management decisions.
Not just that, companies can use actionable Big prospect data to improve channel performance. By sharing the knowledge they have about their end customers with their channel partners, they offer channel partners a better chance to succeed at selling their products/services—in turn gaining the trust of their channel partners.
While enormous amounts of data are available at every company's disposal, thanks to technology; the real challenge lies in making it actionable. The focus of partner and sales enablement platforms has to on helping organizations leverage the available data to the maximum by converting this data into knowledge and utilizing this knowledge to build trust, personal relationships and improve channel/customer engagement with the business.
Mindmatrix is a leading provider of PRM software, channel partner marketing software and sales ecosystems enablement solutions including partner portal software. Since its inception in 1998, Mindmatrix has been focused on helping companies sell more, faster. A pioneer of sales (direct & indirect) and marketing enablement technology, today Mindmatrix is the only company offering a fully unified platform (Bridge ™) that connects and enables sales (direct & indirect), marketing, alliances and partner ecosystems. Backed by Mindmatrix's innovation and expertise, Bridge expands sales ecosystem enablement beyond its traditional boundaries to cover not just Sales Ecosystem Enablement, but also Partner Marketing and Multi-vendor Solutions Management
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