such as Yelp, which allows users to review local businesses. Big-data analytics levels the playing field. “We can predict behavior, rather than guess behavior based on just de- scriptive metrics,” Contreras says. The best reps have the most experience, in personal
relationships, territories, and/or quantitative methods, but through machine learning – the construction and study of algorithms that can “learn” through data – this experience can be replicated and benefits diffused throughout the sales force. Contreras believes that big gains for business- to-business (B2B) salespeople will come in handling volume and complexity. “You used to have to close books on purchase orders, cancellations, receivables, and shipments, then take a week to analyze it all. So data from books closed on Friday would not be useful until next Friday, and a whole selling week was lost,” says Contreras. Now, analysis takes eight hours, and by Monday morning reps are leveraging the intelligence.
Big-data tools include applications to manage and pro- cess large files, extract intelligence, analyze and visualize data, enable machine learning and data mining, and coor- dinate with other systems. These tools can be paid for up front or by a subscription that provides just the capabilities a firm needs as it grows.
Companies’ internal big data includes inventories, ship- ments, returns, and receivables. External data varies by industry and distribution channel. Contreras says some of the most useful external data will be that which is gathered by channel partners but not previously shared with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The experts at 6sense, a B2B predictive-intelligence engine for marketing and sales, use big data to prioritize sales efforts, shorten the sales cycle, increase opportunity size, reduce the number of customer touches, and boost close rates, summarizes Alison Murdock, 6sense’s vice president of marketing. “We are still very early in predic- tive use of big data,” she stresses. That is due in part to the data explosion that’s occurred within the last five years, the unprecedented access to social data, and the Internet of Things. So much data about a firm’s products is now available to prospects that firms want to reach prospects much earlier in the process. 6sense helps firms reach out earlier, when prospects are just starting to look. To do this, it combines internal market- ing, sales, Web traffic, and customer relationship manage- ment (CRM) data with external data from publishers, blogs, review sites and communities, searches, social media, and firm data. A predictive engine classifies each prospect by pipeline stage and levels of activity, such as downloading white papers. For one 6sense client, this guidance meant only 10 calls to close, rather than 33 calls, saving more than two-thirds’ the usual effort. “Time is precious,” Murdock
says. “You have to spend time on the right things.” To streamline an organization’s social-selling efforts, 6sense can help eliminate unnecessary contacts, for instance advising on your 50 most important LinkedIn contacts. “We predict when deals will close and suggest how to approach prospects, for example by email or with a lunch,” Murdock says. “We predict which accounts will buy which products.”
Marketing automation and CRM systems know only internal company data. 6sense adds external data on pros- pect intent, signals, and actions. The tool takes about 30 days to set up, as 6sense normalizes firm data and builds predictive models. Then all analyzed prospect data is giv- en to marketing. A dashboard lets the sales vice president decide how much data goes to reps, and sales reps get a streamlined version of 6sense data and push alerts so they are not overwhelmed. Reps can see why each prospect is rated ready to buy, for example due to clicks on certain Web pages, so reps have confidence in the ratings. Murdock emphasizes that 6sense is also a valuable tool for finding new customers. “One client got its third-largest sales ever from our data. A company was looking for a sales- compensation solution but never contacted our client. They had a high activity score, and it resulted in a $1.7 million deal. Marketing has all your leads but maybe only a fraction of true possibilities.” Managers can also use 6sense to re- align territories for fair and efficient allocation among reps. Qlik, another big data expert, does analytics for finance, human resources, and other corporate functions but focus- es on sales analytics, explains Mike Saliter, vice president of Qlik’s global industry solutions. Thirty-four thousand customers now use Qlik software.
The company uses both internal and external data to segment and size markets and estimate their potential value. Increasingly, this data, from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, is semistructured and must be merged with structured data. Qlik obtains internal data from clients and seeks external data in consultation with them. It then correlates semistructured external data with structured internal data. It can work with data warehouses, temporary storage, or its own hybrid solution for combining struc- tured and semistructured data. Some clients rely on Qlik to store all their data if they don’t have a data warehouse, while others continue to rely on outsourced storage. Qlik then makes big data available and meaningful to everyone from chief executive officers and senior vice presidents to sales managers and reps. Data is dis- played on iPads so users can access it from anywhere. Saliter emphasizes that Qlik is a platform for easily visualized analytics. “It’s a very powerful analytics engine. You can see any
trend and any correlation,” Saliter stresses. Qlik is fast and easy to manipulate, and it can also seek and find correla-
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