As adoption rates in Customer Relationship Management Software (CRMs) continue to rise, a (data-driven) gap in usefulness and effectiveness is very clear.
Let’s start with a reminder: CRMs have a purpose.
Without question, the functionality within CRMs, particularly Salesforce, can create a 360 degree view of the prospects and customers alike.
Yet there are some professionals out there that don’t take that statement as true.
Sales professionals — yes, even managers — on frontlines of business development. Because, let’s face it, even in a perfect world, CRMs benefit company leadership more than the quota-carrying sales rep.
Why? Because like most sales and marketing technologies, CRMs are only as good as the data stored within its database. And unlike most these applications, CRMs fail to help selling professionals, you know, sell.
Instead, a CRM is predominantly used to tell a (retroactive) story about performance, without actually helping improve said performance.
ZoomInfo is here to change that with our latest release, Salesforce Sync.
This latest product enhancement is just the latest chapter in our ongoing effort to put actionable data directly into technologies, channels, and workflows that go-to-market teams use and love.
So, let’s dive into how Salesforce Sync helps enable sales reps by supporting the foundation of any sales process: Territory Management.
ZoomInfo Salesforce Sync for Territory Management
When sales and marketing teams traditionally pull lists, they’re still missing important data that’s relevant only to their organization. And because of that, they’re left with unanswered questions, like:
- “Does someone on my team already own this account?”
- “Do we have a history of reaching out to this contact?”
- “Has this lead opted out to receiving emails from my organization?”
Think about it. From a rep’s perspective, there’s nothing worse than finding that perfect prospective account on LinkedIn. You do your research, figure out relevant messaging for each of your buyer personas, and right before you go to execute the game plan, you realize you never checked Salesforce to check on ownership.
And, of course, it turns out the account is owned by a peer.
In a profession where time is money, this is devastating. It’s not just reps who suffer, either. Even sales managers, who preach swim lanes and road rules as gospel for territory management, struggle to keep up with account distribution, nevermind how they can help account executives, SDRs, and account management prioritize activity.
But what if reps and managers could identify accounts owned by specific reps or that are unowned, yet a part of particular territory? Better yet, what if you could use these same filters while leveraging buying signals to either find new accounts or prioritize what accounts your team should focus efforts on based on likelihood to buy?
ZoomInfo’s Salesforce Sync helps bridge the gap here by connecting our go-to-market intelligence directly to Salesforce. The bi-directional sync pushes and pulls data to and from our platform and Salesforce — specifically the capability to import account, contact, and lead record data.
Context is King: Keep Your GTM Strategy in Motion
Every go-to-market motion begins with a targeted buyer based on company and contact criteria. This isn’t an ‘eye of the beholder’ process.
- Account Executives and Account Managers need to be able to quickly build lists based on accounts that they own.
- Meanwhile, SDRs need to be able to prospect based on leads that their Account Executives own.
- Demand Gen marketers are certainly no stranger to list development. They need to generate segmented lists and remove contacts who have opted-out of previous communications.
We give teams access to their Salesforce data within the ZoomInfo platform, and provide them with the means to personalize their lists based on criteria such as:
- Object owner
- Email opt-outs
- Account type
- Lead status
But what if there’s more information within Salesforce that needs to be referenced, like recent activity, or notes? Salesforce Sync also provides easy links within ZoomInfo contact and company profiles that redirect to their respective record in Salesforce, ensuring a cleaner motion for finding the information that’s needed.
Not only can you personalize your lists but you’ll use these filters to create real time alerts on these saved accounts and searches.
For example, according to Gartner Research, we know when B2B buyers are considering a purchase, the majority (27%) of that time is spent researching independently online. In fact, just 17% is spent meeting with potential vendors. With our bi-directional sync, sales managers and contributors can set filters for accounts they currently own in Salesforce that are displaying intent signals that demonstrate a significant uptick in relevant online activity.
Want another common use case? Let’s say I am an account manager with 100 named accounts. With the help of Salesforce Sync, I can quickly find the accounts I own and create alerts that indicate when these companies add or drop a technology that I’m interested in. (either on a displacement/competitive or complementary basis).
When you leverage tools like Salesforce Sync, you’re better positioned to time your outreach perfectly.
ZoomInfo Salesforce Sync: A Game-Changer
Here’s the bottom line: Sales and marketing teams need access to internal data when building lists, and to do that, they typically have to refer to their CRM.
With ZoomInfo’s Sync capability, they can save themselves the extra step and access that data within ZoomInfo, and combine it with the external data that ZoomInfo’s known for.
They can take action on external and internal data – allowing them to further refine search results, and personalize their experience.