Many things have changed this year. The pandemic has forced many sales organizations to rethink their strategies, tactics, and goals. Now that you’re busy setting goals for the new year, it’s a good time to go back to basics and ensure your foundation is solid for the months to come.

In this article, we’re going through the essential elements you should review and always keep updated to succeed in real-time sales and marketing. Plus, consider these B2B sales trends to stay ahead of the game.

Nobody likes ads. And yet, we’ve never seen—and created— as many ads as we do today. If nothing else, the internet gave us the omnipresence of targeted ads.

Technology made it possible to create ads so personal and hyper-targeted that we tend to believe our devices listen to us at all times. The truth is algorithms know us better than we know ourselves. They’ve learned from the websites we visit, the articles we read, the people we follow, the products we purchase. All that data combined drives the ads we see in our social feeds every day.

In business-to-business, a similar experience is not that simple. For starters, in B2B there isn’t a single individual buyer. What a person reads, sees, or does in your website and social channels is only one piece of the puzzle. Behind every employee, there’s a company with its own challenges, needs, and decision-making processes.

What a year! We can all agree 2020 wasn't exactly what we expected. However, looking ahead with renewed optimism, we're continuing tradition and predicting the most important sales trends in 2021.

Things have changed, but sales activity hasn't stopped. The pandemic forced many companies to rethink their strategies, and we saw remote sales become common almost overnight. Going forward, sales and marketing teams will be more creative and resourceful, building on the lessons learned in the last few months. As a result, companies will refine their strategies with a focus on a new digital customer journey with multiple touch points and channels across various channels.

A renewed focus on the digital journey that puts the customer at the center. That's the premise in which we're predicting next year's sales trends—and here they are:

It's a sign of the times. Everyone has easy access to data on pretty much any company (and anything) in the world today. That's not the problem. The real problem with data is knowing what to do with data. What everybody needs is… actionable insights.

Without insight, sales and marketing efforts are a shot in the dark, no better than cold calling. When your teams can consistently act on hard-earned insights, they can create relevant messages and content to build relationships with the right people.

It’s well documented that target marketing campaigns, like account-based marketing (ABM), deliver better results and higher return on investment. The rationale is very straightforward. ABM concentrates most resources on the highest-value prospective customers possible, using highly targeted, personalized campaigns to win over particular accounts.

As attractive as it sounds, ABM might not be worth your time without the right setup. And, that includes heavy reliance on data. In this article, we’re going to see how you can segment your target audience and create small account clusters so you can drive sales with targeted marketing.

Let’s get into it.

Vainu Company View for Chrome will show the company information you need to build prospect lists and reach out in just one click.

What do top salespeople want? Besides success and eternal glory, that’s it. Salespeople want to know who they should be selling to, what they should be talking about, and what’s the right time to do so. Simple, isn’t it?

To answer those questions, we regularly create different types of content that explain how to become relevant through the use of real-time company information when prospecting, calling, and meeting. For beginners and experts.

In this article, we’ve compiled our most popular resources. Our greatest hits if you will. Download these resources to have a complete toolkit to master real-time sales.

(Oh, and subscribe to our newsletter to stay on top of things to come.)

Data has become a commodity. For marketers, too. If that’s the case, how can marketing pros wear their data expert’s hat for five minutes and be better marketers? Read on and learn four ways marketers can increase conversions by using real-time company information.

Marketers want to be heard. They want to deliver a message with maximum impact. Fat chance without a thorough and comprehensive knowledge of their audience. Do you even know you’re communicating what your audience wants to hear?

An ideal customer profile, a hypothetical description of a perfect-fit customer, can inform your entire sales and marketing strategies, ensuring you allocate your resources to those prospects who will provide the most value to your company. For marketers, this means understanding the audience that will hear their message. 

In this article, we’ll go through the different ways an ideal customer profile can help your marketing campaigns.

Let’s get started. 👇