Telenor and Vainu's partnership transforms the way of work for sales and marketing through real-time insights

Changes in buyer behavior are forcing digital transformation

Today, telecom companies are reacting to the business challenges following digitalization and changes in customer behavior. Thanks to the internet, today’s buyers have access to more information than ever before, which makes them more demanding. To meet the expectations of these informed customers, you need to match their level. Salespeople and marketers must have a clear understanding of their customers' situation and adapt their approach accordingly. And the best way to do that is by using relevant information about them that’s reliable and up to date.

Telenor has a lot of customers, and hence a lot of aggregated and anonymized customer data that needs to be handled in a secure way. “We are on a journey to become more data-driven in order to become better at serving our customers, based on insights about their needs. However, to be able to give our customers the experience they deserve, and be fully data-driven, it’s crucial to also have insights about when their needs are changing. When driving this internal transformation, we noticed that we were reacting too slowly on buying signals, and the company data our salespeople had access to was often outdated or irrelevant.” , says Ragna.

To maintain their position as one of the industry leaders in a fluctuating market, Telenor looked for a partner that could not only give them company insights, but also inspire and motivate them to use the data in a structured way, in order to be more data-driven in their sales processes.

That’s when they found Vainu.

A growth partnership with the goal of real-time sales and marketing

For the past two years, Vainu has partnered with Telenor, empowering them with real-time company insights. “In the early days, it was mostly about the basic prospecting capabilities and account insights” Ragna explains. “But over time the collaboration with Vainu has truly grown into a strong partnership in which we can help each other to constantly develop and take it to the next level.”

Every quarter, Telenor and Vainu have a joint steering group meeting to discuss improvement areas and ongoing trends. “It can be anything, from how to use the data even more effectively, to suggested product improvements to Vainu.” Explains Lisa Johnsson, who’s heading the collaboration with Vainu. The joint belief that data will transform sales- and marketing processes for B2B, as it did nearly a decade ago in B2C, has inspired the partnership and pushed both companies to evolve and improve.

Today, Telenor uses Vainu’s company data in several business streams. Sales representatives are using Vainu for prospecting and account monitoring, and data scientists are using Vainu’s data in their predictive models. In addition, there’s a project in place to use real-time company data in the marketing team, as a part of Telenor’s lead enrichment and lead management processes. “Vainu has been one of our most important partners for company insights and sales enablement” said Ragna. “They’ve helped and motivated us to develop our data-driven sales and marketing processes."

Photo: Lisa Johnsson, Product Owner B2B CLM at Telenor

Full company view in the CRM brings better sales opportunities

Telenor has a large sales organisation divided in several horizontal and vertical streams. “We do the majority of our prospecting through Vainu. It’s very simple for our salespeople to find customer look-a-likes or companies showing growth potential within their segments” Lisa explains.

Vainu’s data allows Telenor to create automated and targeted workflows directly in their CRM, based on relevant changes related to these prospects. In the CRM, they can for example see information such as acquisition activity among customers, which is an important growth and retention signal. Similarly, salespeople can access information about social media indexes which they’ve seen has a proven impact on churn. “By enriching the company profiles directly in our CRM, we are now able to put real-time information directly in the hands of the salesperson. Vainu helps us prioritize our activities and to be more productive” says Christer Wredemark, SME Sales Manager.

As part of their digital transformation, Telenor has also been investing a lot in analysis and data modeling to build a recommendation engine which predicts future customer outcomes. Since adding Vainu’s open data to the equation, they’ve been able to react much faster. Now they can empower their salespeople with all relevant information about who to contact, when to connect and what to say. Reps can get recommendations such as which contracts that need to be renewed as well as which companies that went through mergers or other relevant business changes. “For me as a salesperson, it means that I can give my customers a better experience, being more consistent and professional in my approach”, says Fredrik Hansson Bunpuckdee, SME Sales Specialist.

Learning and developing together

The constant search for improvement together with the new, data-driven strategy, is already showing results. After implementing a mandatory field in the CRM, where sales reps can document the source of the sales opportunity, Telenor can track opportunities from Vainu in a more structured way. During the first two quarters of 2020, Telenor saw a 42 percent conversion rate on sales opportunities from Vainu. In addition, after the first six months of 2020, they’ve measured a 167 percent ROI on the investment.

As Telenor themselves explains it on their website: “ ...to accelerate digitalisation, no single company is an island: partnerships are crucial for innovation. ” Telenor and Vainu have collaborated for a few years already, but the journey towards changing the way B2B-companies work with real-time data has just started. To offer tailored customer experiences, similar to the ones we see within B2C, a two-way partnership with continuous learning is essential.

“We’re really excited about what else this partnership will bring in the future.” Lisa ends.