Creating Ice Breakers

Ice Breakers are personalized snippets of demand generation content designed to incorporate your sales process and RampedUp’s robust understanding about the account / prospect. They can be found on the last tab of the BattleCard or on the My Leads.

Admins can tailor this content and can use tokens by keying the @ symbol to prompt a menu. The below is the token menu:

  • Contact First Name – 
  • Contact Last Name
  • Contact Title 
  • Company Name – the name of the company the contact works for or is populating the BattleCard
  • First Name – RampedUp user’s first name
  • Last Name – RampedUp user’s last name
  • Trigger Event Headline – The most recent news headline for this company
  • Customer 1 – Your most recent customer from Opportunities that is within the same industry
  • Industry – The industry of the company
  • Title 1 – First title from Decision Makers table
  • Title 2 – Second title from Decision Makers table
  • Title 3  – Third title from Decision Makers table

Icebreaker #1 – Use Cases 

Since @<Company Name> and our most recent customer @<Customer 1> are both in the in the @<Industry> industry, I thought I would reach out and share why they came on board. We worked with their @<Title 1>, @<Title 2>, and @<Title 3> to really understand their business, it is what differentiates us. I will have the @<Customer 1> use-case prepared for a call if you are free early next week.

Icebreaker #2 – Triggering Event 

I saw that @<Company Name> was in the news recently: @<Trigger Event Headline>

We work with growing companies like @<Customer 1> in the @<Industry> industry. With the recent news, it looks like a good time to share how we are helping titles such as @<Title 1>, @<Title 2>, and @<Title 3> reach their goals. Are you free for a quick conversation early next week?1

Icebreaker #3 – Competition 

I was researching @<Competitor 1> in the @<Industry> industry and came across @<Company Name>. I saw that @<Company Name> was in the news recently: @<Trigger Event Headline> so I wanted to introduce myself and my company.

If you are you looking for a competitive advantage against @<Competitor 1>, we can help. We help companies like @<Customer 1> reach their goals and would like to do the same with you. Are you free early next week?

Icebreaker #4 – Installed Technologies 

I have done some research on @<Competitor 1> and the decision making process the @<Title 1> did evaluating @<Installed Technology 1> and wanted to share some insights. Are you open to quick conversation on how we helping companies like @<Competitor 1> in the @<Industry> industry improve upon their experience with @<Installed Technology 1>? Are you free to speak early next week?

April 19, 2019 / No Comments /  

Ask these three questions before you buy any contact data.

Only 40% of Email Addresses can be Validated so ask all these big data providers if they model their email addresses or if they come from a verified source. Meaning do they guess at the naming convention based on LinkedIn profiles / email domains then use SMTP negotiation for validation.

This approach has many challenges – first of which is that only 40% of US based companies validate email addresses. The other 60% just validate if the domain is accurate.

Take my name for example.  I go by M. Scott Miller on LinkedIn so how would someone fabricate my email address? Would I go by M or Scott or Mscott? Take my wife Liz as an example – what do they do if an Elizabeth on LinkedIn goes by Liz for her company email.  The most egregious however is the larger companies (10,000+ employees) that have many common names like Scott and Elizabeth, so they use a middle initial or numbers to provide unique email addresses.  Rarely do these large companies provide email validation– they just accept all email addresses and don’t give you any other information otherwise.

If your current vendor uses email modeling then you are only getting 40% of a database – the other 60% is a guess.  Add to the fact that B2B data expires at a 3% rate per month then that guess becomes pretty risky as it ages. Using LinkedIn alone is the biggest hurdle because rarely do LinkedIn users update their profile if they didn’t leave their employer on their own terms.  Unemployed job seekers don’t tell the world they are unemployed – they wait to update their profile on LinkedIn once they have a job.

Do yourself a favor – ask your contact vendor these three questions

  1. Where does your data originate? If it is the web alone then you are at risk of soliciting the unemployed or missing out on executives that don’t want the attention.
  2. How often do you update your data? B2B data expires at a 3% rate per month. If they respond every 3 months then just add 18% inaccuracy from the start.
  3. Do you model your email addresses? Only 40% of modeled email addresses can be validated so 60% of their data is guess at best.

Here are some of the risks of adding bad data to your system.

April 12, 2019 / No Comments /  

Notes from the Adobe Marketo Summit

At the Marketo / Adobe Summit last week, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen  talked about digital as part of your marketing efforts: “Digital is either a headwind or tailwind, and it is up to you to decide. The tailwind [mentality] lets you service your customers better.”

Narayen wenr on stage with Microsoft CEO to discuss their partnership
(the two went to high school together) and discussed the need for data in smart decisioning? Data, Nadella said.

“The greatest asset that everyone in this room has is the data,” he said. “But it is sometimes locked up in silos. If [you] unlock the data and enrich the data … you can optimize outcomes.”

Afterwards, Jessica Kao, director of client services at consultancy Digital Pi, came on stage to discuss the challenges and opportunities that B2B marketers face with ABM. “There are challenges that I see over and over,” Kao said. “First is the data challenges. We all want to jump right to creating that target list of accounts. But let’s face it: We all have bad data, and a lot of it is incomplete.

We talk to customers everyday about their data challenges. After all, contact data expires at a 3% rate per month. Without good data – you are running into a headwind – not using it as a tailwind.

April 8, 2019 / No Comments /  

The Data is the Difference

RampedUp Global Data Solutions is an integrated Sales and Marketing tool created to provide the most accurate contact data available. We work inside of Salesforce or provide the ability to generate lists.

Organizational Tools: RampedUp maintains a database of 300 Million contacts and 9 Million companies. W

  • List Building: We provide access to three separate databases for list building purposes; people, companies, and trigger events. Our user interface is simple and consistent across the platform.
  • Data Appending: RampedUp allows you to append data to existing lists, identifying and validating the records.  Simply upload a list and we will notify you when completed.
  • Look Alike Companies: We identify the attributes of your ideal customer profile and provide prospects that look just like them. With the click of a button, you can download every company and contact that look like your customers and buyers.

Individual Tools: A recent study from CSO Insights found that 51% of leads are generated by sales people.  RampedUp empowers sales people by giving them the names and contact information for every company in their territory. The Battlecard also provides company detail, competitive intelligence, look alike customers and tech stack.

  • Trigger Event Notifications: RampedUp will notify sellers when a trigger event occurs within their named accounts or territory.
  • Personalized Messaging: Icebreakers are templated email or phone scripts customized to the account.  We incorporate data points specific to your sales process to create personalized messaging for demand generation.
  • My Leads: Sellers can see all their selected contacts in one place for ease of use, import, or download
  • Look Up: Search the database for one person or one company
April 6, 2019 / No Comments /  

3 Cold Calling Techniques that Get Results

Modern business development has become an exercise in frustration for most sellers. Their prospects don’t reply to emails or return phone calls and a conversion rate of 1% is seen as an unmitigated success. That is why most senior sellers won’t even engage in the exercise and business development has been created as a separate job. If you are one of the fearless few who make a living by setting appointments, here are three tips to have proven to get results.

First thing is first – there is no such thing as a perfect pitch. The chances of writing the perfect script and having it be considered by the your prospect when they are ready to entertain your offering is all but impossible. Think of prospecting as fishing with a drag net instead of a pole. You first need to identify all the companies that look like your customers and your ideal buyers that work at those companies. Consider this to be your total addressable market. You will campaign to these individuals with a series of emails and phone calls that will find your prospects when they are ready to buy.

Pick up the Phone. As a Decision Maker at my company – I receive emails from vendors that may address my needs but I am also inundated with emails that are just SPAM. And since I am also a busy person, I don’t take the time to sort them out so every one of them goes unanswered. However, if you pick up the phone and dial behind the email then you can grab my attention. Even better – if you call me directly and reference something you know I may need in communication you have already sent (and I have seen it) then you will get an appointment. Don’t just take my word for it, according to FunnelClarity, it will take a seller 40% less dials to set an appointment by dialing directly.

Personalize, Personalize, Personalize. Here is a fun stat, 79% of organizations that exceeded revenue goals have a documented personalization strategy (source.) When cold calling, leaving a personalized voicemail will show that you have taken the time to learn about the prospect’s company and show how you can add value. The best way to personalize a message is to reference a use case that is relevant to the buyer or a recent news article and share how you can help. When a company is in the news for a good reason then you can help them with the expansion or product – and if it is a bad reason then you can help limit the exposure.

In closing, Cold Calling works but you have to make it part of a coordinated campaign to your total addressable market. Pick up the phone and call directly to give yourself the best chance of reaching the decision maker. Lastly, personalize your message through a use case or referencing a news article to prove your value.

April 4, 2019 / No Comments /  

May the 4th be with You – the Last Day of Data.com

On May 4th, 2019 Salesforce.com stopped selling Data.com Connect – you can read more about the product retirement here. The big question is why would they walk away from $142,000,000 acquisition? There are a couple of reasons:

  1. LinkedIn: The individual themselves are a better source of the truth than the data swapping methodology that created Data.com. Social media outlets like LinkedIn were proving to be a better version of the truth than salespeople swapping old records.  And that is important when you consider that B2B Data Expires at a 3%  Rate Per Month according to Hubspot
  2. Account Based Marketing puts a premium on targeted communication to companies and buyers that fit your ideal company profile. Long gone are the days of buying lists of hundreds of thousands of records and sending out an unsolicited email.
  3. GDPR – or the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. The law is quite punitive and happens to take effect the same month. The law requires businesses to show opted in consent before you solicit them – and since consent cannot be passed from one business to another this hampers list acquisition.

All Data.com customers are entitled to a contact matching program from RampedUp!

Get Started on a Free Trial to See for Yourself
April 3, 2019 / No Comments /  

The ROI of Human Validated Direct Dial Contact Data

Meet Joe – he manages an inside sales team of 10 people. Joe has 5 people in the East and 5 people in the West. Joe has the responsibility of setting 10 qualified appointments a day with all outbound activity.

Joe uses a sales automation tool to keep his reps organized and their communication tailored. His team needs 1000 new contacts for campaigning every week (100 a piece.) His campaigns are multi-touch consisting of social, email, phone, and video on higher quality targets. Joe’s multi-touch campaign requires 3 dials per week.

Joe will upload a list of contacts into his sales automation tool and assign them to his sellers for their campaigns. That is where the problems arise.

According to Hubspot, B2B data expires at a 3% rate per month so the list that Joe uploaded was already old. Even using a simple technique of email validation only gets you so far because less than half of companies today provide bounce statistics. Joe knows this all too well as 20% of his list is either outdated or inaccurate from the start. So out of 1000 contact records – Joe was able to use 800 – the fun part is actually finding out which ones are bad throughout the campaigning process.

The key to any successful campaign is the phone. According to FunnelClarity, sellers using a direct dial will save 35 seconds per call and it will take them 40% less dials to set an appointment. A seller is 147% more likely to have a conversation with a VP using a direct line as a result.

Back to Joe – He started out with 1000 contacts but only was able to use 800 of them because they were outdated or incorrect. That is a 20% decrease in people to prospect so his sellers have to make up the difference. Unfortunately, his team will need to make 40% more calls without direct dials to get the same results.

In conclusion – Joe’s team can make 1800 dials to 1000 prospects to reach his goals or make 2400 dials to 800 prospects and come up 20% short. That is the ROI of human validated direct dial data – and that is just for one week.

February 26, 2019 / No Comments /  

Two worlds collide: DiscoverOrg Purchases ZoomInfo

The sales intelligence space has always been ripe with consolidation. Perhaps it all started in 1933 when R.G. Dun and Company merged with The Bradstreet Organization to form Dun and Bradstreet. In recent years, D&B has gobbled up Hoovers, NetProspex, and Avention to round out their portfolio. We have seen innovative crowd-sourcing businesses like Jigsaw become data.com when they were purchased by Salesforce.com only to be discontinued in favor of social media giants like LinkedIn – who was bought by Microsoft.

But DiscoverOrg buying ZoomInfo is different in two aspects. One, ZoomInfo just finished its acquisition of DataNyze – a technographic company backed by Mark Cuban. ZoomInfo was making great strides with its international and SMB coverage. Two, DiscoverOrg recently bought RainKing – a contact data company focusing on the IT space. DiscoverOrg’s claim to fame was the accuracy of their data because they had so few companies to cover (just the global 200.) ZoomInfo is proud of their coverage with direct dials but never provided the org-charting that made DiscoverOrg so popular.

Now the two companies will become one and there is good news and bad news for the consumer. In the short-term, customers will most likely have access to both data sources until they figure out next steps. That is a win in some respects but in others it is a loss.

DiscoverOrg is not going to spend the money to keep both data sets updated so giving customers access to an aging ZoomInfo really isn’t an incentive at all. Zoom will produce aging records until the data sets are merged and inevitability the bad data will find its way into your systems until that happens. Also, sourcing two databases will add time your campaigns, duplicates in your datasets, and manual manipulations errors to standardize the data. If you have every tried to blend data from two different sources you will realize how risky this is to data integrity

However, that will only last so long as the company wants to quickly realize economy of scale. Meaning the business will need to figure out the people, processes, and places that are its best fit going forward. DiscoverOrg just did this with RainKing and almost all of the personnel were let go.

There will also need to be a conversation about sourcing techniques. ZoomInfo uses an email signature scraping technology that is exchanged for contact data. This technology is uploaded by the user and is rarely approved for usage by the user’s employer. And why would they ever approve it? There most precious commodity – their customer data – is quite literally being given away without their knowledge and possibly sold to their competition.

Lastly, the acquisition will have to be paid for and that will come at the expense of the customer. ZoomInfo was a great counterweight to DiscoverOrg’s rising prices but that of course will no longer be available. Companies looking for direct dial data contact data will be forced look elsewhere. There are alternatives that provide human-validated direct-dial contact data yet don’t have to fund the purchase of three separate businesses.

In the short-term, there will be a lot to like about the merger. Call it the honeymoon period. Longer term, as the company decides who it wants to keep and how they want to handle the business, there will be new processes for customers. The sourcing story will need to become transparent as no business willingly gives away its customer data. Lastly, expect to see rising prices as all these acquisitions need to be paid for by the consumer.

February 5, 2019 / No Comments /  

The 3 Ways to Update your Contact Data

Keeping contact records updated and accurate is the key to healthy demand generation. Hubspot reports that B2B data expires at a 2-3% rate per month. So if you haven’t cleaned your sales and marketing tools in two years then the odds are pretty good over half your contacts have moved on. Most people are taken aback by that stat but just look at your own office – what did it look like two years ago?

Bad data manifests itself in various ways without you even seeing it first hand. As example, marketers watch their open rates drop and sellers spend more time on research instead of selling. In other words – your revenue generating productivity begins to fall off as your contact data decays. All is not lost however – there are three ways to update your contact data.

Email Validation – this is the age old technique of removing contact record when they bounce. This is a very effective method for companies that supply bounce data to email senders – but more and more companies are not doing this. As email has become a favorite for malicious actors – sophisticated companies are using Accepts All email servers. These servers will inspect emails for quality, quantity, SPAM, or malware and then decide to either send the email internally.

Social Validation – LinkedIn has become the database of records for most professionals. Chances are your LinkedIn profile will accurately represent your employment history and your current employer. The challenge for most companies however is that LinkedIn doesn’t just allow you to upload your contact records into their system for validation. The process is often very manual and comes with the errors of human hands. The second issue with social validation is that professionals often do not update their until they find a new job. So – if the contact was fired and is “on the market” that won’t be reflected on LinkedIn.

Human Validation –  Machines do a great job at validating contact records at scale but they will never be able to match the level of accuracy of a human being. Your sales team already validates their own accounts and leads today because these records are the most important to them. (While this is a good idea – it does slow productivity as outlined above.) Some companies will employ interns or off-shore resources to validate or manually curate data from trade shows.

When building data for your own purposes or buying it from some one else – savvy sales and marketing leaders should employ all three methods. By the way – be careful if you are buying contact data. We recommend you start with social data as a starting point, validate the email records through SMTP negotiation, then finally have humans verify your most important contacts for accuracy. By employing all three methods you will have very little fall through the cracks for data quality.

That’s how we do it at RampedUp and there really is no better way to ensure your getting the best contact records available.

January 29, 2019 / No Comments /