No matter how good your product or service is, it won’t always be the right fit for every potential customer. That's why lead qualification is such an important step in the sales process. By qualifying your leads, you are able to figure out which companies your organization would create the most value for. This allows you to focus your sales efforts on the companies that are the most likely to benefit from your solution. Simple enough, right?

Here's the thing: Lead qualification takes time, and time is a scarce resource. To avoid unnecessarily wasting time on vetting potential customers, you could automate the lead qualification process. That’s what we do here at Vainu, and we have affectionately dubbed it the Vainu Method™ for lead qualification.

To maximize your sales potential, the leads that are the most likely to buy have to be a priority. The Vainu Method will take you through the lead qualification process, inform you how to automate its most time-consuming steps, and explain why you shouldn’t be afraid to disqualify a lead that’s not worth your time.

Technology leaves footprints that other technologies can track and follow. While looking for new sales opportunities, these footprints can tell you a lot about a company’s current needs and help you determine whether it’s worth it for you as to spend your time cultivating that lead or not.

If a company is using a technology that your software integrates seamlessly with—or if they show an obvious positive attitude to modern technology—they are more likely to welcome a sales call from you. Insights about a company’s tech stack and website technology not only helps you find out whether a company is likely to need your solution or not, it can also help you tailor your pitch better.

If you’re struggling to find new sales opportunities, consider these five tried-and-tested modern methods the next time you prospect.

“Data-driven” is a popular term in the business world these days and it makes sense why: data is the helping hand that decision-makers have been needing. Data helps you troubleshoot your organization, understand your performance, and make better business decisions. It can’t come as too much of a surprise then that data is also of huge benefit for salespeople! By using the right data, salespeople will know whom to contact, when to contact them, and why to contact them. Knowing these things is part of what makes data an invaluable resource for the modern salesperson.

What was a terrible lead yesterday, is a solid opportunity today. What happened?! 

Businesses change. All the time. Subtle shifts, like the hire of a senior-level employee, or earth-shattering changes, like a merger or a funding round, create a window of opportunity. The types of changes that lead to a sales opportunity are commonly known as trigger events.

Trigger events are your sixth sense in sales prospecting, but how can you distinguish between meaningful company changes that create new sales opportunities and noise? How do you turn data into actionable insight?

That's a good question. The trick is to figure out what happened at a company right before they booked a meeting with you, requested a demo, or became your customer. Tune into the right channels and detect relevant company changes and you’ll contact a prospect when they need it most. 

Here’s how you create a simple dashboard to visualize the most effective trigger events. You'll only need a spreadsheet and trigger event data feeding into your CRM.

🚨 We've included a handy template to help you get started. 

Today’s buyers don’t take kindly to spammy salespeople giving unsolicited cold calling with offers that fit their business poorly. That's why putting some thought into your sales prospecting makes sure you're spending your time wisely and making more sales.

Imagine if Microsoft Teams, Slack, or email would work like this: to read new messages, you first have to load all messages, and then, compare them to the previous batch of downloaded messages and figure out if there’s anything new.

Wouldn’t make any sense, right?

And yet, that’s what you often do to find out what changed in your CRM data.

For decades, companies have employed interns, junior analysts, consultants, and data researchers to try to make sense of their CRM data and keep records up-to-date. It was—still is in many cases—a constant flow of files back and forth between systems and people. The era of FTP servers, as one might call it. Not a simple process, but it allowed data analysts spot changes in any data point. For salespeople, such analysis is critical because it helps discover new sales opportunities.

We’re well into the 21st century, so yes, there’s a better way. Let’s take a look at one easy way to keep track of changes in your CRM data, and do it without exporting and importing files.

Most of us use the industry data field in our CRM and marketing automation. It’s an important piece of information. We often create segments and lists by using that industry information as one of our search and B2B segmentation criteria. But how often you end up with endless target lists that include companies that have nothing in common?

This post will cover how to use custom industry categories to create hyper targeted B2B segments. In other words, you’ll learn how to sell more by selling to fewer.

Let’s get to it.

You’ve probably heard the term ‘data’ before. You’ve also probably heard that this thing called ‘data’ can help you make better and more informed decisions, as well as improving your performance. But have you ever been told what exactly business data actually is? Or what different types of business data are? Or how to implement its use? But, before we even get to that stage, have you ever been told where to find this data?

Even if your answers to any of these questions were no, then there’s no need to worry! These are all questions that this article will help you find an answer to so that you can become confident on the topic, more data-driven in your work, and see an improvement in your performance.

It may be stating the obvious, but data is an indispensable component of a modern, successful sales team. Data-driven sales pros can avoid pursuing bad-fit prospects, and at the same time, identify new opportunities that would otherwise go unnoticed.

It’s also obvious to say there’s no shortage of information on pretty much any company in the world today. In theory, any. B2B sales organization is flooding with data. Their databases are filled with data on companies and customers. But.. is this really true? Is your CRM filled with relevant data? Do your salespeople have easy access to the data most relevant to them? And, are you sure that the data they’re acting on is accurate and up to date?