Improving Sales Efficiency Enables Better Focus, Faster Alignment
Enhanced Data Management Practices Drive Worldwide Success
The company’s cybersecurity products serve a wide range of customers, from Fortune Global 500 companies to the global public sector and midsize enterprises, including those in finance, government, health care, higher education, retail, and energy.
Manual Processes and Limited Data Reporting Reduced Sales Ops Agility, Insights
Global businesses face continuous pressures to manage data both inside and outside their organizations to support efficient business operations.
For this leader in the ever-evolving and competitive cybersecurity market, data management challenges are ongoing, and overcoming them is key to the company’s continued growth. This is particularly true for the support of its more than 800 sales representatives worldwide, who rely on clean, targeted, and actionable data to effectively find and close opportunities in their markets.
With more than 1 million end users from more than 40,000 customers worldwide, spanning a wide variety of industries using its security products, this midsize global cybersecurity company operates a massive organization. In addition, it wants to have its company data continuously updated with strategic information for sales management and to purge outdated information.
For the manager of data governance on the sales operations team, who oversees sales account reviews and account assignments, the integrity of operations is essential, particularly for successful sales execution.
The data the 12-person team manages daily helps determine sales territory alignment, company information, and related sales data for more than 180,000 accounts. They set territories for sales representatives to update market information, provide product usage and prospect data to sales representatives, and much more.
With the right data, the team can create a comprehensive view of sales territories and hierarchical views of companies and their subsidiaries and provide linkages to direct opportunities to the right sales teams. The team can discover if a company is part of a much larger organization, potentially opening up more opportunities.
But the work is demanding. “We have to constantly clean our data and properly align it to make sure we’re recognizing all the revenue sources and lining up the correct reps with the right territories,” the manager of data governance explained.
Gaining Control of Data Operations With D&B Hoovers
To help keep up with these complex data management demands and to help sales operations spur worldwide growth, this global cybersecurity company chose the D&B Hoovers sales intelligence solution.
The team started by linking their data to D&B Hoovers data, then presenting the combined view in Salesforce via the D&B Hoovers Salesforce connector. Every new record created in Salesforce from D&B Hoovers can include more than 200 different data points.
With these dynamic features, the team can quickly update the data they’re tracking in D&B Hoovers and align their own account data with the Dun & Bradstreet D-U-N-S® Number, a unique nine-digit identifier for global businesses, to help manage their relationships with other companies.
This wealth of data enabled the team to establish sophisticated corporate hierarchies and linkage filters to examine their sales groups by territories, companies, and personnel and to help fine-tune their strategy as needed. For instance, they can discover if a company is part of a much larger organization, which helps them align the right accounts with the right sales reps.
The D&B Hoovers data provides deep insight into target markets and accounts and allowed the team to carry out:
- Prioritize highest-propensity sales targets, with buyer intent, real-time alerts, and dynamic lead lists
- Tailor personally relevant customer outreach, with news triggers and previously inaccessible audience filters
- Accelerate account expansion, with comprehensive intelligence on hundreds of business records and industries
Improving Sales Efficiency Enables Better Focus, Faster Alignment
The manager of data governance shared that they are now driving efficiency and optimization across the team to foster growth while maintaining the data integrity of its operations.
“D&B Hoovers is allowing us to get things aligned faster and more accurately and with a lot more efficiency than we had in the past. When we set alignment with the correct territory manager and the right salesperson, it now takes 48 hours, whereas before you had to wait a week. You know it’s a huge difference now. It’s massive.”
We like to share our customers’ successes and inspire other teams that face similar challenges. Due to the sensitive nature of some customers’ businesses and their data strategies, we respect their privacy and do not identify them by name. Similar results are not guaranteed. Dun & Bradstreet does not validate accuracy of customer statements made in customer stories or spotlight articles.