Ensuring that marketing and sales strategies truly reflect what the customer needs and want is every Business-to-Business sales company’s dream. A good B2B sales representative will always try to think like their customer. Therefore, it makes sense that they need to thoroughly understand their client’s business, and furthermore, their clients’ clients. Sales professionals are required to learn about the industry and market factors that keep their client’s businesses expanding and going forward – and likewise, they also require a comprehension of the problems, setbacks and snags. A sales person who is trusted enough to be involved in a company’s key decisions, has achieved this aim. But how does semantics technology help in all this?
What is it?
Semantics analytics technology is without a doubt the current king of data searching and organizing. It remarkably interprets the written word on the internet, connecting ideas or concepts, individual words, and company and organization names and network. This can be used as a tool to make market predictions, evaluate industry patterns, suss out what the competition might be getting up to and understanding end markets – to name a few. It is about dynamic information, relevant to both current events and predictable future patterns.
Benefits to B2B businesses
Where building customer rapport used to take years of hard work, sales representatives can now look to developing deeper customer relationships much faster by using semantics analytics. Relevant industry data gathered via this technology can help any B2B vendor develop a holistic informational approach where radical remodeling of resources and training courses for sales teams are required quickly.
Better than Googling
There is a scary overload of information on the web. Sales representatives googling for statistics, reports and data might well get lost in a jungle of information and manual research takes a long time, so the real question is how can the relevant data be located and organized into easily digestible chunks? Thankfully the new semantics technology can bypass the arduous and time-consuming searching and reading, easily locating and dissecting data from social networking sites and the web in an instant. What’s more, the information will always be relevant and useful in the form of blogs, articles by topic, business or industry patterns, and reports highlighting problems, issues, discoveries, statistics and topical news. With semantics technology sales teams can easily access data relevant not only to the business and the industry their clients are working in, but also the in-between links like transport and delivery mechanics, as well as end-markets.
Locating even hard to find data
One of the issues sales reps have traditionally faced is finding articles that are truly relevant to the companies they are working for, but semantic analytics promises to cure this ailment. It is about linking and locating information in previously unexpected places. For example, a major hotel chain may withhold information about plans for building a new resort until the architect has submitted the plans, but an investor may speak to finance media about the new project’s implications for their stockholders. Without semantics analytics, compiling relevant information that makes sense in the whole context can be almost down to a coincidence. A sales representative, who is aware of information before he or she is told about it by the company representative, will obviously always be in an advantageous position.
Big Data at the speed of light
Selling into a market that one is familiar with is easy, but sometimes sales representatives need to venture forth and connect with other sectors. For example, an experienced media sales person selling to property developers may not find it as easy to get to grips with banks and financial institutions, or a B2B company that expand from the automotive industry to transportation logistics, may find their sales professionals struggling to understand what goes on. It takes years of working in an industry to understand it in depth, but sales reps need to access a decent, digestible chunk of information extremely quickly. This can be highly challenging. Therefore businesses that employ semantic technology will save time and human resources when compiling relevant information for their sales teams, allowing for quick solutions to be found and ultimately, succeeding where a less informed competitor will fail.
Saving you money and time
It is all about the value of information and time. Companies that use semantic technology will find that they recover time whilst collating only relevant information that will help their sales representatives to succeed. Sales teams with access to cutting edge industry developments like legislation, competition activity and significant industry trends, will be able to place themselves in their client’s camp. It is paramount that your clients see you, the vendor, as a part of their team and as someone to turn to in a time of need, and semantics analytics is simply the most powerful tool you can employ for this purpose.
Ronald Alexander is a passionate writer and avid blogger currently associated with B2BInternational.com, an international market research company providing valuable information and advice to guide more effective corporate decision making.
Image courtesy Blue Fountain Media
Leave a Reply