How to use Research Hub
In this week’s newsletter I’m going to show you how you can use our Research Hub to accelerate your enterprise account research, and to increase your pipeline creation and conversion.
This will be useful to you if you are an Enterprise SDR or AE, or manager of those teams.
Why do you need to research?
Enterprise customers get bombarded by generic prospecting messages from sellers.
“Noticed that you are hiring…..”
“Noticed that you are a global business”
Straight to spam.
To get in front of customers you need to bring real insight to the table.
“Executives want you to tell them something they didn’t already know about a problem, opportunity or risk in their business that they weren’t already aware of.”
But for many SDRs and AEs, this might be the first time you have heard of this account, or prospected into companies in their specific industry.
So how are you supposed to be able to provide insight about a problem, opportunity or risk that you aren’t aware of?
Research.
Your manager will tell you:
“Go and read their 10-K (annual report), go and read their quarterly earnings, go and read what their competitors are doing.”
There are three big problems with this approach:
It takes a long time - depending on your diligence it could take 2-3 hours of research and note taking
No-one has told you what you are looking for - 10-Ks might be 250 pages long and often companies provide a range of different documents,
Every 12 weeks companies provide updated documents and you need to go back to the start.
So the reality across Enterprise SDRs and AEs that I speak with:
“I know I should be doing deep account research….but I never get round to it”
And this results in that low level personalisation that customer’s despise.
Research Hub - we’ll do the work for you
With Research Hub we want to remove the friction of Enterprise Account research, and we want to make it simple for you to understand an account even if you have never heard of that company before.
In just 10 minutes of reading you will:
Understand what this company does in simple language
Understand how the company is structured and where they make their money
Understand their strategic vision and priorities
Understand three things they are focused on right now
Understand the highlights and challenges from their last earnings report
Understand where to find out more information on the company
Stanley,Black and Decker
We pull out useful graphics to help you understand the business quickly.
Our research is pulled together by human researchers - not an AI tool scraping Google - meaning its not just facts,
You’ll get graphics and business models - a view from one Enterprise seller to another.
How you use this information
Enterprise selling is a team effort. Your account team might include:
Enterprise AE
Enterprise SDR
Solution Consultant
Co-Prime AEs
Customer Success Managers
Your Manager
Senior Execs
Legal
Partners
All of these can do a better job for you and the company if they also understand how this customer makes money, and what their opportunities and risks are.
The Research Hub makes it simple for you to level up everyone’s knowledge of the account during your prospecting and deal planning sessions.
SDR’s can create insightful personalised outreach
Solution Consultants can create relevant talk tracks and demos
Managers can coach you with a better understanding of the account
Senior Execs can speak to their peers on relevant business challenges
Not just for prospecting
Relevant account insight can be used for much more than prospecting.
As you travel through the customer’s buying process, and along your internal sales process you can come back to the Research Hub to validate your decisions and prioritise your next steps:
The Sales Flywheel
Deep account knowledge helps you around the entire flywheel from prospecting to closure.
Better personalised prospecting
Better informed qualification
Highly customised presentations and demos
Business focused meetings
Stronger negotiating
On-schedule closing
And then an improved onboarding and adoption process
How to get started
We are adding in new Enterprise accounts every day, mainly focused on companies HQ’d in the US, with some in Europe.
But we are looking for accounts that you are targeting, so that we can add valuable insight that you will benefit from.
So if you have an Enterprise account you are targeting - request an account below.
Forward this article onto your Enterprise colleagues and managers, and we’ll be happy to continue to add in accounts as they get requested.
So there we have it, the Research Hub will help you as an Enterprise SDR or AE to improve your prospecting and to coach your wider deal team as you go through an enterprise sales process.
See you next week!
Whenever you are ready, there are three ways that I can help you:
Get How To Sell Tech as a paperback, hardback, Kindle or audiobook for a deep dive on how to hit your target in your first sales role.
Subscribe to Research Hub where we publish up to date industry and enterprise account analysis to help accelerate your research and personalise your outreach.
CxO Advisory where I help senior leaders with strategic challenges holding back their sales engine.