3 Tactics to Shave Months (or Years) off your IT Sales Cycle

You know that feeling you have when you are walking into a company you’ve been doing business with for years? You stand in their lobby, waiting for your contacts to be called down and you are confident because you know these guys – you know their technology landscape, what they need, you know who is responsible for which technologies. Most importantly, you know that the solution you are there to pitch fits in their environment.

Wouldn’t you like to head into every IT sales call with that feeling, fueled by that level of knowledge? If you are a startup – wouldn’t it be great to start your IT sales cycle from this point?

But What if I Don’t Want to Wait?

By design, the IT sales cycle takes time. No organization wants to talk to you until you have invested the time to understand their organization and goals. More specifically, they will expect you to know what projects they have open and where your solution would fit in those projects. Granted these types of insights take time to develop. But what if they didn’t? Armed with the right data intelligence solution even an eager start-up could approach prospect organizations with a detailed understanding of each company’s reporting structure, installed technologies and active initiatives.

One of our clients, ITinvolve, came to DiscoverOrg with this challenge. As a startup moving into a competitive market, they needed good data to accelerate straight to the point of engaging with high probability prospects. Our in-depth company profiles enabled ITinvolve to approach prospects with a thorough understanding of target organizations and prepare a solution that addresses their current needs. This ability to fast-forward to the good part gave ITinvolve access to opportunities it would have otherwise missed.

If you see yourself in this story, offering a great solution in search of the right target – if you are interested in how your business can skip right to engagement, having conversations with IT decision makers – you will want to read on.

1. Partner with Good Data

By employing an accurate data intelligence solution with a comprehensive set of sales tools, companies small and large can enjoy the benefits of the long-standing relationship. Good data enables sales teams to engage with prospects with the confidence. They will reach out directly to IT decision makers within those organizations that have the power to champion your solution that solves their current problem.

Public and traditional data sources will give you glimpses of the information you need to build a full picture of a prospect (with no guarantees of age or accuracy). A complete data intelligence solution gives you visibility deep into the target organization, so that you can see reporting structures, responsibilities and have access to complete contact data.

Matt Selheimer, Vice President of Marketing for ITinvolve, says “If you are a startup looking to accelerate how you target specific companies, engage with a customer in a way that demonstrates that you already understand that customer and their roles – then DiscoverOrg is invaluable to being able to do that. What startup company would not want that?”

2. Be the First to Know

A sales tactic that can be very effective is engaging with an organization when you have a buying signal– when they have a key leadership change,a new product or a initative underway. Using a data intelligence solution that automatically alerts you of internal changes or these new initiatives, will get you in the door faster. DiscoverOrg’s Real Time Triggers and Red Alerts will give sales reps the unfair advantage.

Our client, ITinvolve, uses Real Time Triggers to keep themselves informed of opportunities as they develop. “DiscoverOrg increases the likelihood of engagement with a prospect because we approach them in an informed way,” said Selheimer.

3. Keep it Simple, Silly.

Sales teams perform at the highest level when they are able to spend the lion’s share of their time actually selling. Working with reliably accurate data, without the burden of keeping data clean and worrying about platform integration, leaves your sales team with more time to focus on what they do best. DiscoverOrg’s Salesforce.com 3.0 native integration is a powerful tool because it not only liberates sales and marketing from the weight of cleaning, and organizing their data, but it speeds up sales cycles by streamlining the workflow. Marketing and account teams can build campaigns and constantly refresh with the latest updated information from DiscoverOrg, without any additional steps. These integrations simplify, and speed up, the process so your teams can focus fully on selling and closing deals.

A complete data intelligence solution ensures that sales teams will have reliable, actionable data, constantly refreshed, accessible where they use it. With a solution like this, even the newest player in the market can fast-forward to success.

Learn more about how ITinvolve uses good data to shorten their sales cycle and contact companies exactly when they are most likely to purchase.

Download Full ITinvolve Case Study