B2B data, or business-to-business data, refers to any information that benefits B2B companies, particularly their sales, marketing, and revenue operations teams. This data includes account and contact information for company decision-makers with purchasing power, and is essential for activities such as lead generation, outbound sales, and analytics, ultimately leading to more effective and efficient revenue generation.
There are five essential types of B2B data:
Leveraging B2B data for sales success involves a combination of strategies and best practices. To make the most of your B2B data, consider the following:
Ensuring the accuracy of B2B data is crucial for effective sales and marketing efforts. To maintain data accuracy, businesses should consider the following techniques:
B2B data privacy and compliance issues are increasingly important as businesses collect and utilize data to enhance their sales and marketing efforts. Adhering to data privacy regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is crucial to avoid potential financial and reputational damage.
To address these challenges, businesses should implement strict data storage guidelines and data governance practices to minimize the risk of data breaches and ensure the privacy and safety of the data they access.
Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy for managing all of a company's relationships and interactions with its customers.
Lead scoring models rank prospects by assigning points for their behaviors and demographics, helping sales teams prioritize their outreach.
Account-Based Everything (ABE) is a strategy aligning sales, marketing, and success teams to focus on a specific set of high-value accounts.
The awareness stage is the first step in the buyer's journey, where a potential customer realizes they have a problem or an opportunity to explore.
A Content Management System (CMS) is software for creating, managing, and modifying website content without needing specialized technical skills.
A sales lead is a potential customer—an individual or organization that has shown interest in your company's products or services.
Intent-based leads are potential customers whose online actions—like searches or content engagement—signal a clear interest in buying a solution.
Email marketing is a digital strategy where businesses send targeted emails to prospects and customers to build relationships and drive sales.
A sales kickoff (SKO) is an annual event for a sales team to celebrate wins, align on goals, and get motivated for the upcoming year.
Data enrichment is the process of enhancing raw data by adding missing information from other sources, making it more complete and actionable.
Pipeline coverage is a key sales metric. It's the ratio of your total open pipeline value to your sales quota for a specific period.
Lead generation is the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business's products or services.
Predictive lead generation uses data and AI to find prospects most likely to buy, helping teams focus their efforts on high-value leads.
An elevator pitch is a short, memorable summary of what you do, designed to be delivered in the time it takes to ride an elevator.
Technographics is data that outlines a company’s technology stack, helping B2B teams identify prospects based on the software and hardware they use.
Regression testing ensures that new code changes don’t negatively impact existing features. It's a key step to maintain software quality after updates.
The FAB technique is a sales framework connecting product features to advantages and then to the specific benefits for the customer.
Revenue Operations (RevOps) is a business function that aligns a company's sales, marketing, and customer service teams to drive predictable revenue.
Triggers are predefined conditions that, when met, automatically launch a workflow or action, ensuring timely and relevant outreach.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) software helps teams coordinate personalized marketing and sales efforts to land high-value customer accounts.
Learn about bounce rate, including understanding bounce rate implications, key factors affecting bounce rate, & reducing your bounce rate effectively.
Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and interest in your products to build a pipeline of qualified leads for your sales team.
User interaction is any action a user takes within a digital interface, like clicking a button, scrolling a page, or filling out a form.
An AI sales script generator is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized sales scripts for any outreach scenario.
Stress testing is a type of software testing that determines a system's robustness by pushing it beyond its normal operational capacity.
Sales metrics are quantifiable data points that track and measure a sales team's performance against specific goals and objectives.
Video selling uses personalized video messages to engage prospects, build rapport, and guide them through the sales funnel to close more deals.
Mid-market companies are businesses larger than small businesses but smaller than large enterprises, often defined by revenue or employee size.
GPCTBA/C&I is a sales qualification framework for understanding a prospect's goals, plans, challenges, timeline, budget, and authority.
Closed Lost is a sales term for a deal that didn't go through. The prospect decided not to buy, or the sales team disqualified them.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a system of integrated software that businesses use to manage and automate their core day-to-day processes.
Lead routing is the automated process of distributing incoming leads to the right sales reps based on predefined criteria.
Learn about B2B sales, including key strategies for B2B success, types of B2B sales models, & B2B vs. B2C sales: understanding the differences.
Learn about buyer intent, including understanding buyer intent signals, strategies to capture buyer intent, & buyer intent vs. customer interest.
Network monitoring is the continuous process of tracking a computer network's performance and health to detect and resolve issues proactively.
Responsive design is an approach where a website's layout adapts to the user's screen size, providing an optimal experience on any device.
A sales demo is a presentation where a sales rep shows a prospect how a product or service works and solves their specific problems.
Channel partners are third-party firms that help market and sell a company's products or services, acting as an indirect sales force.
Intent data tracks a user's online behavior—like searches and site visits—to identify signals that they are ready to make a purchase.
A demand generation framework is a strategic process for creating awareness and interest in your product, ultimately driving new business.
Sales intelligence is technology that gathers and analyzes data to help salespeople find and understand prospects and existing clients.
Hadoop is an open-source framework designed for the distributed storage and processing of extremely large data sets across clusters of computers.
Retargeting marketing is a digital advertising strategy that targets users who have previously interacted with your website or brand online.
Persona-based marketing uses fictional customer profiles, or personas, to create targeted messaging for specific audience segments.
Site retargeting is a marketing strategy that shows ads to people who have previously visited your website but left without converting.
CRM integration connects your CRM software with other tools, creating a unified system for all your customer data and business processes.
Warm outbound is a sales strategy for contacting prospects who've shown interest in your brand through prior engagement, like website visits.
Learn about B2C2B, including how B2C2B transforms sales, key strategies for B2C2B success, & differences between B2C2B and B2B2C.
Learn about buyer intent data, including sourcing and interpreting buyer intent data, & key metrics in buyer intent analysis.
Website visitor tracking collects and analyzes data on user behavior to understand their journey and improve the overall user experience.
NoSQL ("Not only SQL") databases offer a flexible alternative to relational models, excelling at managing large and unstructured data sets.
Mobile compatibility ensures your site or app works flawlessly on mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, for a seamless user experience.
A sales call is a real-time conversation between a salesperson and a prospect, aiming to persuade them to purchase a product or service.
Docker is a tool that packages applications and their dependencies into isolated environments called containers for easy deployment and scaling.
A commission is a service charge paid to an agent for a transaction. It's typically a percentage of the sale, rewarding performance directly.
Demand is the economic principle describing a consumer's desire and willingness to purchase a specific good or service at a particular price.
HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform with tools for marketing, sales, and service, all aimed at helping businesses grow.
A sales territory is a specific group of customers or a geographic area that a salesperson or sales team is responsible for managing.
Cohort analysis is a behavioral analytics tool that groups users with common traits to track their actions and engagement over time.
A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a prospect who has shown interest based on marketing efforts but isn't yet ready for a sales conversation.
A Salesforce Administrator is a certified professional who manages and customizes the Salesforce platform to meet a company's specific business needs.
Sales operations analytics is the practice of analyzing sales data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire sales process.
Integration testing is a software testing phase where individual modules are combined and tested together to verify their interaction.
Sales automation uses software to streamline and automate repetitive, manual sales tasks, freeing up reps to focus on selling.
Learn about B2B data platform, including key benefits of B2B data platforms, choosing the right B2B data platform, challenges in implementing B2B data platforms.
Cross-selling is a sales tactic of encouraging customers to purchase products or services that are related to what they're already buying.
Content Rights Management involves controlling the use and distribution of copyrighted digital media to protect intellectual property.
Revenue forecasting is the process of estimating a company's future revenue, using historical data and market trends to guide strategic planning.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are websites that look and feel like native mobile apps, offering features like offline access and push notifications.
Psychographics categorizes people by their attitudes, interests, and lifestyles, revealing the 'why' behind their purchasing decisions.
A marketing play is a repeatable tactic used to achieve a specific marketing goal, like generating leads or driving engagement.
Account mapping is comparing your customer list with a partner's to find common prospects and unlock new sales opportunities.
Inside sales is a remote sales process where reps sell products or services via phone, email, and other digital tools instead of in person.
An email cadence is a scheduled sequence of emails sent to prospects over a specific period to nurture leads and drive engagement.
Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a business strategy where the product itself drives user acquisition, conversion, and expansion.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results.
Objection handling in sales is the process of responding to a prospect's concerns about a product or service to move the deal forward.
Cold emailing is sending unsolicited emails to potential customers you haven't contacted before, aiming to start a business conversation.
Key accounts are a company's most valuable customers, vital due to their significant revenue contribution and strategic importance for growth.
An enterprise is a large-scale organization, often a corporation, defined by its complex structure and substantial number of employees.
An Account Development Representative (ADR) identifies and qualifies new business opportunities, creating a pipeline for account executives.
Lead scoring is the process of assigning points to leads based on their attributes and actions to determine their sales-readiness.
Accounts Payable (AP) is the money a company owes its suppliers for goods or services bought on credit. It's listed as a current liability.
De-duping, or data deduplication, is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data within a dataset to improve accuracy and save space.
Customer retention refers to the strategies and activities a company uses to prevent customer churn and encourage them to continue buying.
“End of Quarter” (EOQ) refers to the final weeks of a business quarter when sales teams rush to meet quotas, often leading to a flurry of deals.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total cost a business spends to gain a new customer. It includes all sales and marketing expenses.
Lead enrichment adds third-party data to your raw lead lists, creating fuller prospect profiles for more effective and personalized outreach.
Firmographic data is information used to classify firms. It includes attributes like industry, employee count, location, and annual revenue.
Chatbots are AI-powered programs that simulate human conversation. They interact with users via text or voice, typically for customer support.
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.
Total Addressable Market (TAM) represents the maximum revenue a company can earn by selling its product or service in a specific market.
Cold calling is a sales tactic where reps contact potential customers by phone who haven't previously expressed interest in their product or service.
A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic.
Lead scraping is the process of automatically extracting contact information and other relevant data about potential customers from online sources.
A sales pipeline is a visual representation of where prospects are in the sales process, from the first contact to the final sale.
No Cold Calls is a sales strategy that replaces unsolicited calls with warm outreach to prospects who have already demonstrated interest.
Data security protects digital information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle.
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software application that manages your entire hiring and recruitment process from a single dashboard.
A Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) API is a web service that uses XML to exchange structured information between different applications.