The 6 benefits of ‘Relationship Context’ in the sales process

By Connor on November 27, 2011 in ,

The Economist - World in 2012

I recently read an article in The Economist where Ron Conway* (Silicon Valley investor) discussed the emerging trends for 2012. The first area he discussed was “context” in relation to the explosive growth of smart phones.  He explained how the next generation of search will leverage additional contexts to help you further ‘qualify and sort’ search results. For example,  existing services already use your location to help you find nearby coffee shops, but by adding social contexts, users will be directed to the coffee shop that their friends have already visited and reviewed.

In many ways, this trend reflects how Datahug is bringing new context to the  sales qualification process. By automatically identifying co-workers that have an existing connection with your target prospect, Datahug helps shorten the lead qualification process.  This means that you can easily pick up the phone to colleagues in order to quickly research, qualify and get introduced to potential prospects.

Building ‘relationship context’ into your sales process has six key benefits;

  1. Better research. Finding a co-worker with prior knowledge of a prospect makes research easier, faster and more efficient.
  2. ‘Warmer’ Cold Calling. Getting introductions or referrals from existing co-workers converts cold calls to warm calls.
  3. Better Conversion Rates. Better informed research, results in better qualification and stronger conversions.
  4. Less Waste.  Reduce wasted effort chasing duplicate or dead leads.
  5. Increased Collaboration. Leverage track record and experience in other areas of the business to cultivate new sales.
  6. Shorter Sales Cycle. Getting introduced to the right person, first time within the prospect organization results in less meetings and shorter sales cycles.

*Ron Conway is an investor in Datahug

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Social networking vs. client poaching

By Niamh on October 23, 2011 in

Networking is one of the main buzzwords in business these days. We are all at it… Constantly! However, have you ever considered the motivation behind the addition of contacts on business networking sites? Do you find it intriguing to see your clients connecting with your friendly competitors? When is networking actually poaching? And how can you prevent your staff taking valuable relationships with them when they leave?

These days we are so publicly networked and so exposed by the level of social networking, that our valuable clients can be poached easily by opportunistic competitors. Relationships are the competitive advantage within every company, however the control over those relationships is a rather grey area. You essentially cannot stop your staff from taking their relationships with them after their departure from your company. You can make it difficult for them to engage with your clients right after they leave your organisation by working restrictive covenants into their contracts preventing them from engaging with competitors for 3 or 6 months for example. However, human nature is such that clients and former staff with good rapport will strike up again. Your main objective is to know that the relationship exists in the first place, and to at least have a chance to foster and maintain it after your staff’s departure.

Datahug provides you with a platform to automatically capture each and everyone of the relationships that exist within your organisation. On average, we unlock 1,100 unique contacts for every mailbox we index. We show you the relationships which are strongest based on our trademark Hugrank, our metric on the relationship score. When a staff member leaves, you can ensure smooth continuity for your clients by immediately reassigning the strong relationships they had to a new staff member. Datahug helps mitigate the risks associated with staff attrition efficiently, before they ever even decide to leave!

Signup for a free trial now to experience how Datahug can help you protect and retain your customer relationships

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Salesforce.com CEO on “Connecting the Dots”

By Connor on October 16, 2011 in , ,

Behind the Cloud by Marc Benioff

“Don’t dial for dollars! Never cold-call; always call with a plan. Learn about the company and use your network to find the right individual(s) to approach. Our sales team uses our network the same way people use the business networking Web site LinkedIn, constantly reaching out to our contacts (our executive team and board of directors) to find connections. With the reach of our executives, customers and partners, it is almost impossible not to be able somehow to connect the dots before engaging with a prospect. When we were trying to win lender CIT as a customer, for example, we realized that Gary Butler, the CEO of ADP, a customer of ours, was on the board of CIT. I reached out to Gary, who recommended us to CIT. The first meeting we had at CIT was with its CEO and chairman, Jeffrey Peek. By connecting the dots, we won the unlikely opportunity to get to the “C” level on an initial sales call. This ultimately resulted in a multithousand-user deal and an extremely short sales cycle.”

Excerpt from Marc Benioff’s book,Behind the Cloud

At Datahug, we couldn’t agree more. In enterprise and professional services sales, relationships are your key route to market. By automatically unlocking 1,100 unique connections per employee Datahug gives our clients a competitive advantage when it comes to connecting the dots and getting in front of clients faster.

To learn more contact us today or sign up now for your free trial

 

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Are you cold calling clients you already know?

By Connor on October 16, 2011 in ,

No more cold calling

Last Friday I received a rather interesting cold call that quickly demonstrates why cold calling clients you already know is bad for business. Let me bring you through the cold call I received and the impact if had on my perception of the calling organization.

Cold Caller: Hi, can I speak to Connor Murphy?

Me: Yes, speaking. Who is this and how can I help you?

Cold Caller: My name is John (changed to protect the caller’s identity) and I’m calling from ABC Inc (a large, top tier professional services firm)

Now at this point, the cold call suddenly became warm in my mind. This is because I have an existing relationship with ABC Inc and know several partners and senior executives in the firm. I had been in their offices a few weeks earlier discussing how Datahug could help them develop new business and win more sales. I did not remember meeting John but I quickly pulled up his company’s profile page in Datahug to see if anyone else on the team had a connection to him. I quickly saw that John was not on the list of 22 contacts we had at his firm and was interested in talking to our newest contact at ABC Inc.

Me: Hi John, Great to hear from you. I don’t think we’ve met before so please let me know how I can help?

Cold Caller: I’m calling to invite you to an event we are hosting next week on Topic X

At this stage I became slightly confused. Topic X was out of total left field with any previous conversations we had with anyone at the firm. I was wondering who at the firm thought we were interested in X and probed for more information.

Me: Thanks very much for the invite. Did the invite come via Brian (Partner) or Susan (Head of Bus Dev)?

Cold Caller: Ah…. (awkward pause)… No. I don’t know who they are

Me: Brian is a partner in X practice and Susan is your Head of Business Development

Cold Caller: (cautious/nervous tone) Ah… No I don’t think I know who they are

Me: Sorry, what practice did you say you were in again? Who gave you my contact details for the invite list?

At this stage I was very confused. I felt a bit awkward for John but was sure we would quickly find out who our common connection was and clarify who in the organization had added me to the invite list.

Cold Caller: I’m a recent joiner in Practice Y. I was asked by our head of marketing to find technology CXO’s who might be interested in Topic X. I found your contact details on the website and decided to give you a call to see if you might be interested.

Deflated. I gave John my contact details and quickly wrapped up the call. It was a cold call after all and had nothing to do with our on-going business meetings.

On reflection, I’m sure John was equally glad to finish the call. He had no easy way to know that 22 of his colleagues already had a relationship with me and my company. I’ve been in John’s shoes and I’m sure as a new joiner he would have appreciated knowing that at least 2 partners in his firm already had strong relationships (our Hugranks were above 70%) with his cold call prospect. If John had a service like Datahug he could have built considerable brand value in the customers mind by being better informed during our call. Imagine how much better the call could have gone if John had opened with:

Cold Caller: Hi Connor, This is John from ABC Inc. I was speaking to Brian and Susan earlier about Datahug and they thought you might be interested in attending our event on Topic X next week. They know that you have not discussed Topic X before but we thought you might be interested because of X, Y and Z… etc…

This simple insight would leverage the collective insight of ABC Inc and immediately move the call from cold to warm in the mind of the customer. This difference in approach would also position the firm as a trusted adviser that understands their customers and is pro-active about helping them grow.  Better connecting the dots can often be the difference between winning and losing business.

So – could this happen at your company? What impact do you think it would have on your brand and reputation?  If you have had any similar experiences then we would love to hear more about them in the comments below. Companies often struggle to connect what the left hand and the right hand is doing. Our mission is to automatically unlock who know’s who and to help ensure no-one has to ever cold call clients again that you already know. You can learn more how Datahug can help on the benefits page or by signing up for your free trial today.

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The Hidden Cost of Email

By Datahug Team on October 16, 2011 in , ,

Email is not free. In fact, it can be very expensive.

In their research entitled “The cost of email interruption”, Professors Jackson, Burguess and Edwards, at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom, found that one company with 2850 users spent 9.8 million pounds reading email every year. They established that on average it took 76 seconds to read each message and that the average time to recover from the interruption was an additional 64 seconds

They developed the following equation to calculate the cost of reading emails every day:

ERD x (T1 + T2) x DS x NE

Where:

• ERD is the number of work emails Received Daily (excluding spam or personal messages).

• T1 is the average time to read each message, which in this case was 76 seconds.

• T2 is the average time to recover from the interruption, which was 64 seconds.

• DS is the average daily salary of the company’s employees, expressed in minutes.

• NE is the number of employees users of e-mail in the company.

This equation excludes the cost of writing email along with the underlying infrastructure and software costs to send, relay and archive the messages. However it does highlight the significant financial costs of reading email and gives a framework for benchmarking.

In his book ‘E-mail at the Workplace‘, Juan Carlos Jimnez concludes that the cost of email should be significantly higher at knowledge based firms that rely heavily on email for communication.

If we think that the average cost in time to read e-mail could reach 6,800 US$ per employee, there’s no doubt that e-mail has a high financial impact on any company. This means that the significance of e-mail at the workplace goes beyond the traditional technological and linguistic view that we have of this medium. … This time can be substantially greater in companies that provide mass services, which have an intensive use of the technology, like companies in software, telecommunications, finances, banks, insurance, utilities, etc

The book and research both suggest that email training can help reduce this cost by raising awareness and sensitivity to best practices. However they do not identify any software  that can help measure and track ongoing email usage metrics. Without sufficient and timely analytics, managers and employees will be unable to pro-actively address and tackle the high costs of email.

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Are digital distractions threatening your teams productivity?

By Datahug Team on September 21, 2011 in ,

A recent ‘digital distraction survey’ conducted by Harmon.ie found that employers are losing $10,375 per employee (20% of salary*) in productivity every year. Email alone accounted for $3,900 of this with each user spending up to 30 minutes searching through their mailboxes each day. To learn more about how Datahug can help you measure and manage your use of email sign up now:

*All Figures are based on a salary of $30 per hour
Digitial addicition results in lost productivity
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Datahug to speak at Velocity conference with Seth Godin and former Xerox CEO

By Datahug Team on September 8, 2011 in

Dealmaker Velocity NY 2011 is for progressive business leaders, particularly in sales, marketing and sales operations, who want to sell smarter and manage better, and continuously meet or exceed revenue and profitability goals. It is about innovation; the convergence of sales knowledge, intelligence, methodologies, and technology; combining to fundamentally change sales velocity and management results.

We’re delighted to have been invited to speak at this event as the core theme this year is to discover solutions and best practices to:

  1. Increase win rate and deal value with effective opportunity management and automated deal coaching
  2. Shorten the sales cycle and gain control of the buying process with effective sales process design
  3. Maximize penetration in key accounts with strategic account planning and customer collaboration
  4. Get sales forecasts you can bank on and a sales pipeline you can believe through predictive analytics
  5. Achieve continuous sales performance improvement through embedded learning

We’re also looking forward to speaking with Seth Godin, Anne Mulcahy and Donal Day

Seth Godin spreaking with Connor Murphy Seth Godin, perhaps the world’s foremost marketing provocateur and recognized thought leader, will make you question the status quo and will challenge your thinking.
 Anne Mulcahy speaking with Connor Murphy Anne Mulcahy, Chairman of Save the Children and former Chairman and CEO of Xerox.
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Conflict of interest searches are costing the legal industry time and money

By Datahug Team on September 5, 2011 in

‘Time is our most valuable and scarcest resource’

- The Managing Partner of every law firm in the world -

Having come from a large law firm where every minute was metered and charged, I could instantly see the time and money saving possibilities for law firms that embrace Datahug. e.g use it for a targeted conflict check… Conflict checking is a necessary evil of a law firm’s sales process and generally involves a partner emailing the whole firm going “ any reason we can’t act for “Mr. X” in a case that will be adverse to “ABC Limited”…speak now or forever hold your peace..”

The conflict check email pops up in the inbox of every fee earner and it generally takes at least 60 seconds for each person to open and read the email, respond if relevant, and then get back working…and that’s if they even read the email! So the email is being opened by hundreds of the wrong people and is potentially being deleted unread by the relevant people….
In a busy law firm, it’s usual for at least 5-10 conflict checks to be sent every day. If we assume there’s 150 fee earners in the firm that’s at least 100 people spending 1 minute each reading 5-10 unnecessary emails a day… that equates to 8 – 16 hrs a day!….in an industry where time is money that’s a lot of money!

Datahug provides a more streamlined and efficient conflict check process. Take the example above, the partner searches for “ABC Limited” and sees all interaction between ABC Limited and his firm over a specific period. She can quickly email all or some results directly from the Datahug system. Suddenly her conflict check is targeted to only the relationships that might constitute a conflict. As the conflict check process is more credible, the targeted people are much more likely to read and respond to it…AND…. hundreds of fee earners are not unnecessarily disturbed and can continue blissfully billing that time….

About the Author

Karol Corcoran is a solicitor and current MBA candidate at the London School of Economics. He spent the last 6 years working at a leading European commercial law firm.

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