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.
Triggers are predefined conditions that, when met, automatically launch a workflow or action, ensuring timely and relevant outreach.
Data security protects digital information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle.
Data enrichment is the process of enhancing raw data by adding missing information from other sources, making it more complete and actionable.
Direct sales involves selling products directly to consumers in a non-retail setting, such as at home, online, or person-to-person.
Workflow automation uses rule-based logic to run a sequence of tasks that would otherwise require manual human effort to complete.
Gamification applies game mechanics like points, badges, and leaderboards to non-game activities to boost engagement and motivate users.
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software application that manages your entire hiring and recruitment process from a single dashboard.
GDPR compliance means following the EU's strict data protection laws to ensure the secure and lawful handling of personal data.
Feature flags let you remotely control features in your app without new code. This enables safe testing, gradual rollouts, and quick rollbacks.
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Consultative selling is an approach where salespeople act as expert advisors, diagnosing customer needs to provide the most suitable solutions.
SFDC stands for Salesforce Dot Com, a popular cloud-based CRM platform that helps companies manage their customer interactions and data.
A headless CMS is a back-end content repository that delivers content via API to any front-end, decoupling the content from its presentation layer.
Generic keywords are broad search terms that lack specific details like brand or location. They attract a wide audience with less specific intent.
A Marketing Qualified Account (MQA) is a target company that has shown significant engagement, indicating it's ready for the sales team to pursue.
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Process Builder is a Salesforce automation tool that lets you create 'if/then' business processes with a user-friendly visual interface.
Customer centricity is a business approach that puts the customer at the heart of every decision, aiming to build loyalty and long-term value.
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.
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.
A sales call is a real-time conversation between a salesperson and a prospect, aiming to persuade them to purchase a product or service.
"Smile and dial" is a high-volume sales tactic where reps make numerous cold calls from a list, often with little to no prior research.
A System of Record (SoR) is the authoritative data source for a specific type of data. It acts as the single source of truth for an organization.
Lead scraping is the process of automatically extracting contact information and other relevant data about potential customers from online sources.
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A Representational State Transfer (REST) API is a web service that uses a simple, stateless architecture for systems to communicate online.
Contact discovery is the process of finding accurate contact details for potential leads, including names, emails, phone numbers, and job titles.
Warm outbound is a sales strategy for contacting prospects who've shown interest in your brand through prior engagement, like website visits.
An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a detailed description of the perfect, hypothetical company that would get the most value from your product.
Precision targeting is a marketing strategy that uses data to identify and reach a highly specific audience most likely to convert.
A buying committee is a group of stakeholders within an organization who are jointly responsible for making major purchasing decisions.
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.
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the ethical gathering and analysis of market data to inform strategic business decisions and gain an advantage.
Competitive analysis means identifying your rivals and assessing their strategies to pinpoint your own business's strengths and weaknesses.
Cold calling is a sales tactic where reps contact potential customers by phone who haven't previously expressed interest in their product or service.
User-generated content (UGC) refers to any form of content, like images, videos, or text, created and shared by users on online platforms.
Sales operations analytics is the practice of analyzing sales data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire sales process.
No Cold Calls is a sales strategy that replaces unsolicited calls with warm outreach to prospects who have already demonstrated interest.
A sales funnel is a model illustrating the customer's journey from initial awareness to the final purchase, narrowing down leads at each stage.
Outbound sales is when reps proactively contact potential customers through cold calls or emails to generate leads and build a sales pipeline.
Sales enablement technology refers to software and tools that equip sales teams with the resources they need to close more deals efficiently.
Lead enrichment tools are platforms that automatically add missing data to your leads, like contact info, firmographics, and buying signals.
Content Rights Management involves controlling the use and distribution of copyrighted digital media to protect intellectual property.
Mid-market companies are businesses larger than small businesses but smaller than large enterprises, often defined by revenue or employee size.
Buyer’s remorse is the sense of regret or anxiety that can arise after making a purchase, often questioning if it was the right decision.
A talk track is a script that guides sales reps during calls. It ensures they cover key points and maintain a consistent message with prospects.
Sales prospecting software automates the process of finding, contacting, and tracking potential customers to help sales teams build their pipeline.
Stress testing is a type of software testing that determines a system's robustness by pushing it beyond its normal operational capacity.
X-Sell, or cross-selling, is a sales strategy of selling additional, related products or services to an existing customer base.
Microservices is an architecture where apps are built as a collection of small, independent services that communicate with each other over APIs.
Sales acceleration refers to strategies and technologies designed to speed up the sales cycle, enabling reps to close more deals, faster.
Account-Based Sales Development (ABSD) is a focused strategy where SDRs target key stakeholders within specific, high-value accounts.
Sales coaching is a process where managers help reps improve their skills and performance through personalized feedback, training, and guidance.
A lead generation funnel is a systematic process that guides potential customers from initial awareness of your brand to becoming qualified leads.
A sales territory is a specific group of customers or a geographic area that a salesperson or sales team is responsible for managing.
CRM integration connects your CRM software with other tools, creating a unified system for all your customer data and business processes.
A marketing automation platform is software that automates marketing actions. It helps manage tasks like email campaigns and lead nurturing.
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Site retargeting is a marketing strategy that shows ads to people who have previously visited your website but left without converting.
Scrum is an agile framework that helps teams structure and manage their work through a set of values, principles, and practices.
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A User Interface (UI) is the point where humans and computers interact. It encompasses all visual elements like screens, icons, and buttons.
An AI sales script generator is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized sales scripts for any outreach scenario.
A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic.
Account-Based Everything (ABE) is a strategy aligning sales, marketing, and success teams to focus on a specific set of high-value accounts.
Ramp-up time is the period a new hire takes to get fully up to speed and become a productive member of your go-to-market 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.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total cost a business spends to gain a new customer. It includes all sales and marketing expenses.
Application Performance Management (APM) monitors and manages an application's performance, availability, and the experience of its end-users.
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 consumer is an individual or entity that buys products or services for personal use, not for resale. They are the final user in a supply chain.
A marketing attribution model is a framework for assigning credit to the marketing touchpoints that lead a customer to convert.
Lead generation is the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business's products or services.
A marketing play is a repeatable tactic used to achieve a specific marketing goal, like generating leads or driving engagement.
The marketing mix is the set of marketing tools a company uses to sell products, defined by the 4Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
Sales and marketing analytics involves measuring and analyzing performance data to maximize effectiveness and optimize return on investment (ROI).
Buying intent is the collection of online cues and behaviors that signal a prospect is actively researching and moving toward a purchase decision.
Event tracking is the method of collecting data on specific user actions, or 'events,' on a website or app, such as clicks or downloads.
Cohort analysis is a behavioral analytics tool that groups users with common traits to track their actions and engagement over time.
Responsive design is an approach where a website's layout adapts to the user's screen size, providing an optimal experience on any device.
Lead scoring models rank prospects by assigning points for their behaviors and demographics, helping sales teams prioritize their outreach.
The FAB technique is a sales framework connecting product features to advantages and then to the specific benefits for the customer.
Customer relationship marketing is a strategy for building lasting connections with customers to foster long-term loyalty and engagement.
AI data enrichment uses artificial intelligence to automatically enhance and update raw data, making it more complete, accurate, and valuable.
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.
Sales workflows are a set of automated actions that streamline the sales process, helping teams engage leads consistently and close deals faster.
Employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to their organization, motivating them to contribute to the company's success.
A Content Management System (CMS) is software for creating, managing, and modifying website content without needing specialized technical skills.
An Account Executive (AE) is a sales professional responsible for closing new business deals and managing existing client relationships to drive revenue.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a focused B2B strategy where marketing and sales collaborate to target and convert high-value accounts.
A product champion is an internal evangelist who drives a product's adoption and success by ensuring it solves real problems for their team.
Rollback procedures are a set of steps to restore a system to a previous, stable version after a failed update, ensuring minimal disruption.
Cold emailing is sending unsolicited emails to potential customers you haven't contacted before, aiming to start a business conversation.
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Load testing is a type of performance testing that determines how a system behaves under both normal and anticipated peak load conditions.
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.
White labeling is when a company puts its own branding on a product or service that was actually produced by a different company.
Lead scoring is the process of assigning points to leads based on their attributes and actions to determine their sales-readiness.
Objection handling is the process of responding to a prospect's concerns or hesitations about a product or service to move a deal forward.
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