Enriched Contact Databases Grow Sales Productivity

For direct sales specialists, a dynamic, comprehensive contact database is essential for productivity. While CRM solutions certainly enhance up-selling, cross-selling, and service for an organization’s current customer base, sales prospecting, pipeline development, and sales support can also benefit from a strong data foundation.

In the classic sales guide, Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets by Michael T. Bosworth, the author notes that successful sales professionals use a variety of strategies to “align” with prospects and buyers. Chief among them is the idea that Bosworth defines as “situational fluency” in which sales specialists develop deep knowledge of how buyers operate with and without the products and services they’re selling and they understand how those solutions match the specific situations of the buyers.

In the education market, there are several key characteristics that can provide critical clues into a school or school district’s “situation,” including enrollment, metro status, funding levels, community demographics, recent scores on high-stakes tests, technology in place, and the list goes on. By providing sales specialists and their managers with this data prior to actual sales calls, the path to “situational fluency” is shorter, because knowledgeable education sales specialists will immediately have a head start in understanding that particular district’s needs and challenges around instructional delivery, administration, student achievement, and more. And for sales staff who are new to the market, enriched contact data can be an immediate training resource.

And there’s always the matter of time management to consider as well. The K-12 market is multi-layered, and finding the right personnel and their correct contact information can often take a considerable amount of time. Sales managers are constantly looking for ways to keep salespeople reaching out to prospects and customers, rather than spending hours trying to identify who are the best contacts in a school or district. Integrating directory data into your staff’s contact databases can eliminate substantial research and “look-up” time and that builds productivity as well.

Integrating education directory data into your contact management solutions can also provide consistency and stability across your sales organization. You can make certain that each member of the team has optimum information with which to build sales plans and targets. In the event your staff changes, investments in prospect development can remain with your organization. And, lastly, education personnel are mobile. New job titles and new administrators are a constant fact of life for every school district, and teachers are changing jobs more rapidly than at any previous time. A dynamic source of contact information is essential for keeping pace with changing school and district personnel in each salesperson’s territory.

MDR School Directories: The Essential Prospecting Resource

With 100% coverage of U.S. districts and schools, MDR School Directories offer flexible options, including both Web and print versions, and our electronic data is formatted for easier export into other software applications. Data in our Web directories updates twice a month so your sales staff has constant access to the most current data available.

MDR School Directories offer data points that the competitors simply do not, including NCLB status, results on standardized tests, and in-depth information about grants districts receive. In addition, they include:

Contact your MDR Representative for complete information. Test drive our School Directories online with no cost or obligation. Click here.