The 2024 B2B Data Buyer’s Guide For Sales Leaders

Actionable contact and prospecting information may be the most significant piece of the “success” or “failure” puzzle in B2B sales. Did you know that sales representatives squander an average of 60 minutes daily due to bad data? Those hours add up! It’s difficult enough to manage team goals, handle accounts, and give constant training without having to double-check your information constantly. 

However, sales leaders should not be concerned about the threat of “poor data.” Sales intelligence platforms provide you with account information, such as decision-makers, funding, revenue, and other indicators. A reliable B2B data provider can help you understand other firms better, make informed decisions, develop new business prospects, and support marketing and sales teams.

By 2025, 60% of B2B sales organizations will move from experience-based selling to data-based selling.

Let’s give you a head start! In this piece, we will look in depth at the benefits, applications, and trends of B2B data. As a sales leader, you’ll primarily be interested in Buying Intent data as the newest B2B data source.

What is B2B data?

B2B data is defined as any relevant information about your prospects or other businesses. Its primary application is to drive marketing and new sales tactics or procedures. Companies use this high-quality data to increase business prospects, improve lead creation, and do better market research, among other things.

What are the Types of B2B Data?

The sales benefits of B2B data or sales intelligence platform ranges from increased leads to targeted segmentation, faster audience buying intent identification, and greater outreach personalization.

Every organization should incorporate four key B2B data types in its sales and marketing plan. We refer to it as the four pillars of B2B data.

Contact Data

Contact data is all about getting your foot in the door by assisting you in reaching prospects and knowing who they are. This data type provides you with insights such as:

• Names
• Telephone numbers, email addresses, and other contact information
• Employment data have been updated.
• A list of skills, certifications, and education

Firmographic Data

The name itself contains the hint. Assume your company offers specialty services that are specially customized to the demands of a particular sector. You need a B2B data provider to help you access trustworthy firmographic data. 

Firmographics include the following data fields:

• The company’s name 
• Revenue
• The business’s location
• The industry in which the company operates
• The size of the company and the number of workers
• The many business kinds

Such information is frequently useful in creating effective lead-scoring procedures.

Technographic Data

Technographic data is information about the tools and technology organizations employ in their day-to-day operations. Specific data fields would contain information such as:

• Technologies (Hardware and Software)
• Providers
• Integrations

Intent Data

B2B intent data focuses on a company’s research and likely purchasing activity. Intent data monitors activity from an organization to gauge their interest in purchasing a solution soon.

Intent data has several advantages, such as

• Allowing you to discover leads before your rival businesses
• Helping you prioritize them
• Offering you the luxury of segmentation

Why Sales Leaders Should Focus More on Intent Data in 2024

Buyer intent data has become an effective analytical tool for B2B sales. Simply put, it has transformed how we think about campaign creation since we can now create leads from targeted, in-market customers. Intent data can help sales better understand prospects and provide tailored, timely solutions to satisfy their needs.

Sales leaders use intent data to improve account prioritization.

Knowing when and how to reach accounts is one of the most difficult aspects of being a B2B salesperson. Frequently, sales reps feel like they are wasting their outreach time. Using intent data, sales can know who they should be targeting first by spending time on those most likely to buy. 

Increase lead conversions using intent data.

Intent data combines many factual streams to provide the most accurate picture of a given buyer. This is highly beneficial to sales professionals since it allows them to tailor their outreach to specific groups of customers rather than the whole account book. Intent data assists businesses in better understanding prospects’ research processes and providing appropriate materials and solutions to their specific interests.

Intent data is used by B2B sales leaders to enrich their CRM.

As a sales leader, you know that the CRM or sales database may get stale with old, weary data points. You can only utilize the same value proposition a few times in your email prospecting. As a result, sales teams have turned to intent data to supplement their CRM with additional insights. Intent data may look at additional information, such as competition intel, budget allocations, or even new corporate activities, in addition to tracking what your buyer is doing. If the data can be fed into an AI-powered analytics system, it can determine purchase intent probability.

Intent data is the essential ingredient to reaching your best leads first.

Intent data helps with sales and marketing alignment.

Both the sales and marketing teams are motivated by revenue targets and are measured against specified KPIs. By definition, intent data is collected and supplemented by the marketing team before being sent to the sales team via leads. This connection bridges the gap and fosters alignment between sales and marketing representatives. Rather than increasing lead generation numbers to meet sales goals, marketing may increase lead quality to help sales hit their goals.

Intent data is a core part of revenue strategy.

Any new resource that can provide you an advantage over your competitors should be prioritized. However, like all other strategic parts of B2B sales, intent data must be handled effectively to influence your team positively.

Expect more and more sales teams to be using intent data in 2024. Early adopters will see the highest ROI since their competition will lack the insight, early sales response, and shortened sales cycle intent data users gain. Earlier, companies like ZoomInfo and D&B were the most popular ones due to their extensive data. However, the wide coverage of relevant and human-verified data that SalesIntel provides has made us the go-to choice as a ZoomInfo alternative. 

What is Data Enrichment, and Why is It Essential?

Sales leaders must be confident in the integrity and completeness of their data to extract accurate insights from corporate data and, ultimately, enhance sales. 

Here’s an example:

Assume Mr.Smith (a project manager) has downloaded a case study from your website. You’ve labeled him as a TOFU (Top of Funnel) prospect and begun nursing him down the funnel. You don’t have comprehensive information about his organization because you restricted the form to name and email address.

You now have all of the information you need to contact the lead. You cultivated the lead and did everything perfectly, but you later learned he is not a sales-qualified prospect. His firm is too small to benefit from your business. The reason for ‘closed lost’ is insufficient data. A better-informed marketing and sales system would have never sent Mr. Smith as a lead to a sales rep for outreach. This is when enhancing your CRM data comes into play.

The best sales intelligence platforms offer the process of combining raw data from your internal resources with data from other internal or external data sets is known as data enrichment.

Data enrichment is a significant commodity for every business because it converts raw data into meaningful and relevant facts. Most brands enhance their raw data to make educated sales decisions.

To understand the purpose and method of data enrichment in detail, you can read the data enrichment guide.

You can improve the success of your B2B go-to-market strategy by using buying intent, technographic, firmographic, demographic, direct work mobile dials, and data enrichment.

Sales intelligence tools help you reveal your target audience’s demands, pain spots, goals, expectations, and interests, among other things. It may also help you find and engage with decision-makers at target accounts by providing human-verified company and contact information.

How Data Enrichment Will Help Sales Leaders in 2024

In 2024, finding and integrating an affordable and reliable Sales Intelligence Platform to serve as an alternative to ZoomInfo is an easy way to stay ahead of competitors. As sales leaders explore ZoomInfo competitor options, the focus on data enrichment and precision targeting comes to the forefront.

Comprehensive B2B Data Provider:

To enhance sales strategies, leaders must align with a comprehensive B2B data provider. Such a provider furnishes basic contact details and enriches datasets with additional insights, offering a holistic view of prospects. This strategic approach ensures that sales efforts are directed towards prospects aligning closely with specific product or service offerings.

Strategic Use of Sales Intelligence Platform:

Integrating a Sales Intelligence Platform is key to unlocking actionable insights for sales leaders. This platform, functioning as a powerful tool, goes beyond traditional lead generation by providing real-time updates, facilitating personalized communication, and aiding in effective lead scoring. Its strategic use allows sales teams to prioritize high-value prospects and optimize conversion strategies.

ZoomInfo Alternative for Enhanced Personalization:

Seeking alternatives to ZoomInfo, sales leaders can explore platforms that offer enriched data for improved personalization. Crafting personalized interactions, from tailored email content to targeted marketing campaigns, becomes seamless with a ZoomInfo alternative. This approach builds stronger connections with prospects, increasing the likelihood of successful conversions.

Navigating the Landscape of ZoomInfo Competitors:

As sales leaders navigate the landscape of ZoomInfo competitors, the focus shifts to solutions that not only provide enriched data but also align with Account-Based Marketing (ABM) principles. Platforms that support ABM enable sales teams to create account-specific strategies, enhancing their overall effectiveness in strategic account management.

Form Optimization is the Key to Generate and Close More Leads

Streamlining the process of website form submissions is a key strategy for increasing form fillings. Shorter forms or the convenience of auto-fill options have proven effective in enhancing user experience and encouraging higher engagement. Data enrichment emerges as a valuable solution to achieve this optimization, ensuring that forms remain concise or even auto-filled, thereby reducing the barriers for visitors to complete the forms.

In B2B data acquisition, selecting a data provider that not only supplies data but also aids in enrichment and optimization is crucial for sales leaders. A notable player in this space is FormsIntel, a provider that specializes in enhancing the quality of data used in forms. By leveraging their services, sales leaders can expect streamlined and enriched forms that contribute to a more personalized approach in their interactions.

The significance of such enrichment and optimization becomes apparent in the increased quantity and quality of leads generated. Shorter or auto-filled forms, made possible through data enrichment, translate into a smoother user experience. This, in turn, results in a higher volume of form submissions, providing sales leaders with a greater pool of leads to nurture and convert.

Furthermore, the enriched data collected through these optimized forms allows for a higher degree of personalization in sales efforts. Armed with more detailed insights into prospects, sales teams can tailor their outreach strategies, delivering messages that resonate with the unique needs and preferences of each lead. This personalized approach significantly enhances the chances of successfully closing deals and fostering long-term customer relationships.

In summary, combining shorter or auto-filled forms and data enrichment, facilitated by a specialized provider like FormsIntel, is a strategic approach that increases form fillings and contributes to a more efficient and personalized sales process. The result is a pipeline filled with leads that are not only abundant but also of higher quality, setting the stage for successful conversions and sustained business growth.

Choosing the Right Sales Intelligence Platform Checklist

Data – quality data – is at the heart of Sales Intelligence. When you want to keep your sales pipelines going (qualified leads on one end, market opportunities out the other), you need access to the best Sales Intelligence platform. Here are questions to consider while choosing the right Sales Intelligence tool for your team.

• What is the Data Coverage and Accuracy?
• What Types of Data are Included?
• Does the Tool Fit Your Workflow?
• Is the Data Actionable?
• What is the ROI on the Data Spend?
• Can the Data Flow Throughout Your Whole System?
• Will Data Enrichment Be Provided?
• Is the Data Privacy Compliant?

Find the Best B2B Data Provider for Your Business

Preparing your database requires a lot of time and work. Using a Sales Intelligence platform lets you stop worrying about data collection and management and get right to selling.

With so many B2B data partners and Sales Intelligence platforms to pick from, it takes time to choose one that fulfills your goals while offering reliable data within your budget. Use the above information and criteria to help you get started.