The problem with data management alone (intelligence vs comprehensiveness)

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Many B2B companies put a focus on data management – keeping clean, accurate and up-to-date information about their customers and prospects. And while clean data sounds nice, it simply is not sufficient at driving predictable, efficient and scalable revenue performance across your customer-facing teams and activities.

Clean data isn’t the answer, nor is it your goal.  Clean data sitting in your database does not help you make money.  Accurate data that is not coupled with customer and market insights fails to give you the intelligence and leverage you need to have smarter, more impactful conversations.

According to the Harvard Business Review, 55 percent of companies rank data as highly influential to their go to market strategy.  Yet only four percent of those organizations place a high priority on improving their data strategy.

Managing data accuracy and organization is not an effective strategy.  Actionable, scalable intelligence is the competitive differentiator helping market-leading B2B SaaS companies drive broader revenue results.

According to SiriusDecisions, B2B organizations can generate up to 70 percent more revenue than a typical organization by improving the quality of their data.  But data quality is just the beginning.  Data intelligence is the truly blue ocean opportunity to scale marketing’s revenue impact.

Data intelligence should be at the heart of your marketing-lead revenue revolution.

There are several reasons why data intelligence (vs mere data management) has helped B2B organizations embrace and achieve greater lifetime revenue results:

  • More data vs the right data: What insights, based on your understanding of target customer personas and their buying journey, will help you identify when certain customers are ready to buy, and buy again?  These insights are not tied to having more data.  You don’t win more customers by simply collecting more information about them.  The right data, applied together in an intelligent way, delivers actionable and repeatable stories your customer-facing teams and marketing campaigns can leverage.
  • More data vs actionable data: It is not enough to simply “enrich” your data.  Does it really matter if you have 10 data points on each customer vs 20, 50 or even 100 data points?  If you can’t take action on that information, what value is it to you?  Many companies spend countless dollars on enrichment with little to no ROI to show for it.  Smart B2B CMOs focus instead on actionable data, combined with processes that help their teams communicate those stories on a regular basis.
  • More data vs fast data: Some of your most valuable customer insights have a short shelf life.  What your customer is experiencing today might change significantly by tomorrow, let alone next week.  Your ability to intelligently derive insights from your combined data and quickly take action is paramount.  Fast data that engages your prospects and customers at the right moment is increasingly a make or break differentiator to drive more frequent revenue-driving decisions by your customers.

To learn more about the data intelligence imperative, get a copy of the B2B CMO Revenue Revolution paper we’ve written with Calibermind.  Download your copy here.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Matt Heinz
Prolific author and nationally recognized, award-winning blogger, Matt Heinz is President and Founder of Heinz Marketing with 20 years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations and industries. He is a dynamic speaker, memorable not only for his keen insight and humor, but his actionable and motivating takeaways.Matt’s career focuses on consistently delivering measurable results with greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty.

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