Sales 1

"Chance Favors the Prepared Mind"
Understanding the Science of Sales Intelligence

July 2011
Peter Ostrow

"Chance Favors the Prepared Mind" - Understanding the Science of Sales
Intelligence
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2011 Aberdeen Group. Telephone: 617 854 5200
Executive Summary
Research Benchmark
Aberdeens Research
Benchmarks provide an
in-depth and comprehensive
look into process, procedure,
methodologies, and
technologies with best practice
identification and actionable
recommendations
Contemporary sales practitioners have a good news, bad news dilemma.
There is plenty of available information at their fingertips about their
customers, prospects, and target markets, but the flood of data has created
a potential TMI situation, in which the endless stream of content
threatens to drown out the best sales opportunities within a steadily rising
tide of unfiltered intelligence overload.
Best-in-Class Performance
In March and April 2011, Aberdeen surveyed 254 end-user organizations to
learn about their sales effectiveness. Aberdeen used the following three key
performance criteria among the 236 responding companies currently
deploying sales intelligence, to distinguish the selling organizations within
Best-in-Class companies:
92% average current customer retention rate, compared to 80% for
Industry Average companies and 31% for Laggards
28.4% average year-over-year increase in total company revenue,
compared to a 4.6% increase for the Industry Average and a 9.0%
decrease among Laggards
14.6% average year-over-year increase in overall team attainment of
sales quota, versus 0.4% for Industry Average companies and a
10.6% decrease among Laggards
Competitive Maturity Assessment
Survey results show that the firms enjoying Best-in-Class performance share
several common characteristics, including:
86% sales-focused, centralized repository of account, contact and
sales opportunity information, versus 63% of other companies
68% sales intelligence is enhanced by data shared by other functions
within the company, such as marketing, customer service or
operations, vs. 48% of other companies
64% defined sales milestones or stages include criteria based on the
use and analysis of sales intelligence data, i.e. validating the accuracy
of prospect contact/company data, vs. 43% of other companies
Required Actions
In addition to the specific recommendations in Chapter Three of this
report, to achieve Best-in-Class performance, companies must:
Analyze/segment the customer base to identify up-sell or cross-sell
opportunities
Support sales intelligence initiatives with sales forecasting/analytics,
email marketing and campaign management deployments

www.aberdeen.com Fax: 617 723 7897
We use sales intelligence to
segregate our markets and
develop targeted approaches
for each sector.
~ George J. Karambis,
Registered Representative,
Primerica Financial Services
This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group. Aberdeen Group's methodologies provide for objective fact-based research and
represent the best analysis available at the time of publication. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group, Inc.
and may not be reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent by Aberdeen Group, Inc.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary....................................................................................................... 2
Best-in-Class Performance..................................................................................... 2
Competitive Maturity Assessment....................................................................... 2
Required Actions...................................................................................................... 2
Chapter One: Benchmarking the Best-in-Class.................................................... 4
Issue at Hand............................................................................................................. 4
Business Context of Sales Intelligence................................................................ 4
Identifying the Problemand the Solution........................................................ 6
The Maturity Class Framework............................................................................ 8
The Best-in-Class PACE Model ............................................................................ 8
Best-in-Class Strategies........................................................................................... 9
Chapter Two: Benchmarking Requirements for Success.................................13
Capabilities and Enablers......................................................................................15
Chapter Three: Required Actions .........................................................................22
Laggard Steps to Success......................................................................................22
Industry Average Steps to Success ....................................................................23
Best-in-Class Steps to Success............................................................................24
Appendix A: Research Methodology.....................................................................26
Appendix B: Related Aberdeen Research............................................................28
Figures
Figure 1: Top Goals for Deploying Sales Intelligence........................................... 5
Figure 2: Key Business Pressures Requiring Sales Intelligence Support ........... 6
Figure 3: External Content Most Captured to Improve Sales Effectiveness... 7
Figure 4: Consumers of Sales Intelligence by the Best-in-Class......................... 9
Figure 5: Best-in-Class Strategic Actions...............................................................10
Figure 6: Data Quality and Age by Best-in-Class.................................................11
Figure 7: Year-over-Year Corporate Performance.............................................14
Figure 8: Effective Use of Sales Intelligence: Quality vs. Quantity...................16
Figure 9: Push vs. Pull of Sales Intelligence............................................................17
Figure 10: CRM Integration of Sales Intelligence.................................................20
Figure 11: Sales Intelligence Budgets: On the Rise..............................................25
Tables
Table 1: Top Performers Earn Best-in-Class Status.............................................. 8
Table 2: The Best-in-Class PACE Framework ....................................................... 9
Table 3: The Competitive Framework...................................................................13
Table 4: The PACE Framework Key ......................................................................27
Table 5: The Competitive Framework Key ..........................................................27
Table 6: The Relationship Between PACE and the Competitive Framework ......27
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Chapter One:
Benchmarking the Best-in-Class
Fast Facts
Among Best-in-Class
companies, an average of
5.2% of all staff members
actively use sales intelligence,
compared to 4.8% among
Industry Average and
Laggard firms
54% of the Best-in-Class
report that their senior
executives are active sales
intelligence consumers,
versus 38% of all other
companies
89% of Best-in-Class sales
organizations measure the
effectiveness of their
intelligence deployments at
least monthly; 74% of other
companies do the same

In a world where the number of daily tweets rose from 2.5 million in 2009
to 50 million in 2010, or a 35-million-member Groupon could fetch $6
billion after less than two years in existence, the incredible pace of data
growth is staggering. The challenge now is to separate the valuable sales
intelligence content from the static around it, so that quota-carrying
professionals have maximum time to do what they do best: sell.
Issue at Hand
In the Aberdeen benchmark report, Sales Intelligence: Preparing for Smarter
Selling (February, 2010), the research among 528 end-user sales
organizations revealed that the most frequently-used delivery models for
sales intelligence were limited to remarkably traditional, if not predictable,
applications: email, search engines, Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) or Sales Force Automation (SFA) tools, and spreadsheets. Paid
access to secure (paid) information sources, a seemingly natural fit for sales
intelligence and/or product marketing, logged in at only 30% of all users, in
fifth place in terms of end-user popularity. The Best-in-Class survey
respondents from this study (companies with the highest team quota
attainment and reduction of sales cycle), however, placed far more emphasis
than Industry Average and Laggard firms on an automated integration with
the CRM/SFA deployment (44% Best-in-Class adoption vs. 35% among all
other firms), and also on the less-used third-party technology (37% vs. 29%).
Subsequent research conducted for The Extended Sales Enterprise: Channeling
Better Results (March 2011) report further showcases the value of using
automated sales intelligence delivery models to maximize selling time and
filter out valuable data from the information overload noise. Companies
adopting this practice out-performed others in overall team attainment of
quota (72% vs. 59%), staff reps achieving quota (53% vs. 44%), channel
partners attaining quota (46% vs. 29%) and even channel lead acceptance
rates (42% vs. 27%). The challenge, in 2011, is to understand not only the
value of sales intelligence, but the best ways to capture, disseminate and act
upon the highly valued needles in the haystack of available data.
Business Context of Sales Intelligence
As Louis Pasteur famously said, Chance favors the prepared mind, and
successful sales professionals have long understood the benefits of know
before you go when it comes to being prepared for the next cold call,
meeting, presentation or negotiation with knowledge about their prospect,
customer or marketplace. With advent of seemingly unlimited online
resources, of course, the virtual pendulum of power has shifted from
seller to buyer as pricing, customer satisfaction and product information
about virtually every solution or service has become available and, in most
cases, free on the Internet. Indeed, even for the sellers side of this
equation, basic information about people and companies has become highly
commoditized, and is usually available to anyone with a browser. Instead,
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Sales Intelligence Defined
For the purposes of this
research, the phrase sales
intelligence refers to any
information used to educate
and enable the sales force and
enrich the sales pipeline. This
includes news on industry
trends, consumer generated
content, list/database providers,
analyst reports, prospecting
tools, competitive/market
intelligence, and lead
augmentation solutions.

the focus of todays most effective sellers has shifted to the behavior past
and future of our business prospects, rather than simply the identities of
the individuals involved in the potential transaction. Their challenge, of
course, is to identify, understand and act on this behavior in a time-effective
manner.
Figure 1: Top Goals for Deploying Sales Intelligence
66%
46%
34%
17%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Improve the quality
and quantity of
leads in the sal es
pipeline, in order to
maximize sales rep
selli ng time
Improve sales reps
knowledge of thei r
territory, industry
and accounts
Identify hi gh-value
prospects through
trigger events
Unifying customer
i nformation to
better up- and
cross-sell into
existing accounts
n = 254
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t
s
All Companies
66%
46%
34%
17%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Improve the quality
and quantity of
leads in the sal es
pipeline, in order to
maximize sales rep
selli ng time
Improve sales reps
knowledge of thei r
territory, industry
and accounts
Identify hi gh-value
prospects through
trigger events
Unifying customer
i nformation to
better up- and
cross-sell into
existing accounts
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All Companies

Source: Aberdeen Group, May 2011
In Figure 1, we see that survey respondents confirm, in selecting their top-
two goals for the deployment of sales intelligence, that time is of the
essence when it comes to effectively supporting their front-line selling
team. Nearly two-thirds of companies focus their energy on building a
robust and tight sales pipeline, which includes the efforts of marketing and
inside sales teams that identify, touch and qualify sales opportunities before
field reps bring deals to full fruition. By feeding plenty of well-vetted leads to
the closers, companies are attempting to balance the quality/quantity of
the content of this funnel by assuring that the right people, companies and
potential products/solutions purchased are identified in the early stages of
the customer management process.
Nearly half of respondents also cite sales team education as a priority, with
intelligence about buyers competitors, market dynamics and industry
information providing a more elegant layer of context to the basics of
people and company data. Also included among the top three goals
reported were the use of trigger event notification; in Sales Intelligence:
Preparing for Smarter Selling (February, 2010), more than twice as many Best-
in-Class firm than Laggards (43% vs. 20%) used these opportunities to
understand time-sensitive changes in people, companies or markets in an
on-demand environment. This practice can help sellers quickly adjust their
messaging, pricing or other selling strategies to help win deals that are
impacted, for instance, by merger/acquisition activities, changes in key buyer
personnel, or legislative/regulatory changes that impact a specific market
niche.
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Identifying the Problemand the Solution
Achieving these goals through the deployment of successful sale intelligence
solutions and practices means identifying the specific barriers, or business
pressures, that need to be overcome through the strategies, processes and
enabling technologies that will be defined below. As Figure 2 indicates
clearly, despite the plethora of content available to professional sellers, they
simply do not have enough of the right information to identify the right
people, companies and business pains to associate with closing deals around
their respective product or service line. In selecting their top-two business
pressures, respondents are telling us that throwing everything against the
wall to see what sticks is an ineffective sales approach; in contrast, they
need to know more precisely what people, companies and solvable business
problems exist within their target markets, to more effectively and
proactively create satisfied customers out of identified prospects. Of note is
that the most frequently indicated pressure, insufficient knowledge of the
business needs of prospective buyers, at 42% of respondents, ranks well
above the 30% of respondents citing it as a top pressure as noted in Sales
Intelligence: Preparing for Smarter Selling (February, 2010), underscoring its
increased importance today. Another key pressure, overly long sales cycles,
is quite understandable, considering the average of 5.2 months among all
survey respondents is 18% longer than the 4.4 months from the 2010
research.
Figure 2: Key Business Pressures Requiring Sales Intelligence
Support
Always look to the processes.
Is all intelligence gathering,
storing and disseminating in
accordance with the business
needs?
~ Kyle Pillay, Business
Development Manager,
Perimetrix Holdings

42%
40%
34%
21% 21%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Insufficient
knowledge of
the business
needs of
prospective
buyers
Inability to
identify the most
likel y buyers of
our product or
service
Our sales cycl e
is too long
We are unable to
identify which
companies are
most likel y to
purchase what
we sell
Increased
customer churn
drives more
focus on filling
the top of the
funnel with new
opportunities
n = 254
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All Companies
42%
40%
34%
21% 21%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Insufficient
knowledge of
the business
needs of
prospective
buyers
Inability to
identify the most
likel y buyers of
our product or
service
Our sales cycl e
is too long
We are unable to
identify which
companies are
most likel y to
purchase what
we sell
Increased
customer churn
drives more
focus on filling
the top of the
funnel with new
opportunities
n = 254
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All Companies

When considering the ways in which companies can resolve these business
pressures through sales intelligence, we can ask: what kind of information
can help with the typical companys challenges in pipeline management, sales
team knowledge, sales cycle reduction and overall sales effectiveness? Figure
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3 illustrates the most commonly captured data that survey respondents
indicate are vital to their selling operations. In the lead is, in fact, the widely
available data pool about decision-making executives and the companies for
whom they work, though the 74% response level is significantly lower that
90% from the 2010 Sales Intelligence research. The widespread availability of
this information 88% of respondents use free Internet resources as part of
their sales intelligence mix makes it almost an assumptive type of practice,
akin to email, voice mail or spreadsheets though surprisingly, 26% of
survey respondent do not access such basic information, even at little or no
cost. Yet the other top-five content types shown in Figure 3 provide us with
more insight into additional kinds of information, those that are less
obvious, and more impactful, to overall sales success. More than half of
companies surveyed provide, for their sellers, details on prospects inner
workings such as organization charts, financial reports and competitive
intelligence, as well as news, trends and technologies that are company- or
market-specific. Most of these data are not free, and are captured and
disseminated through the kind of processes and technology enablers
described below. Finally, user-generated content tweets, posts, blogs, etc.
has clearly grown into a valuable source of both consumer- and business-
related sales intelligence, and pending Aberdeen research will explore the
collaborative and business value of formalizing deployments in social media
marketing, monitoring, selling and customer service.
Figure 3: External Content Most Captured to Improve Sales
Effectiveness
44%
53%
57%
69%
74%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Executives/
people
information
Targeted company
details, financials,
competitors
Contextuall y
relevant
news
Anal yst data
on industries,
trends or
technologies
User-
generated
content
n = 254
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All companies
44%
53%
57%
69%
74%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Executives/
people
information
Targeted company
details, financials,
competitors
Contextuall y
relevant
news
Anal yst data
on industries,
trends or
technologies
User-
generated
content
n = 254
P
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All companies

As we examine additional differences among the channel sales Best-in-Class,
Industry Average and Laggard performers, we will find ample explanation of
how companies with better quota, conversion and deal size performance
have achieved their results.
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The Maturity Class Framework
Of the 254 organizations that participated in this study, 93% indicated that
their organizations currently deploy channel sales intelligence; it was these
236 companies that were used to calculate the maturity classes. Aberdeen
used three key performance criteria among responding sales organizations
around partner-based selling, to distinguish the Best-in-Class from Industry
Average and Laggard organizations:
Current customer retention rate
Year-over-year change in total company revenue
Year-over-year change in overall team attainment of sales quota

Organizations with top performance based on these criteria earned Best-in-
Class status, as described in Table 1. For additional details on the Aberdeen
Maturity Class Framework, see Table 5, The Competitive Framework Key,
in Appendix A.
Table 1: Top Performers Earn Best-in-Class Status
Definition of
Maturity Class
Mean Class Performance

Best-in-Class:
Top 20%
of aggregate
performance scorers
28.4% average year-over-year increase in total company
revenue; 100% showed improvement
14.6% average year-over-year increase in overall team
attainment of sales quota; 78% showed improvement
92% average current customer retention rate
Industry Average:
Middle 50%
of aggregate
performance scorers
4.6% average year-over-year increase in total company
0.4% average year-over-year increase in overall team
Laggard:
Bottom 30%
of aggregate
performance scorers
9% average year-over-year decrease in total company
10.6% average year-over-year decrease in overall team
Now, lets take a deeper look at how the best sales performers manage
their people, processes and technology to consistently out-perform the
competition around these metrics.
The Best-in-Class PACE Model
Using sales intelligence to achieve corporate goals also requires a
combination of strategic actions, organizational capabilities, and enabling
technologies and services that are summarized in Table 2.
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Table 2: The Best-in-Class PACE Framework
Pressures Actions Capabilities Enablers
Insufficient
knowledge of
the business
needs of
prospective
buyers
Inability to
identify the
most likely
buyers of our
product or
service
Identify and/or
disqualify sales
prospects with
more accuracy
Increase the overall
quantity of leads in
the sales pipeline
Capture and share
our sales reps'
knowledge (about
competitors,
customers, trends)
internally
Sales-focused, centralized
repository of account, contact and
sales opportunity information
Sales intelligence is enhanced by
data shared by other functions
within our company
Process for tracking prospect
engagement (email click-throughs,
website visits, etc.)
Analysis/segmentation of our
customer base to identify up-sell
or cross-sell opportunities
Process for unifying information on
current customers
Lead management solution
Web analytics or web site visitor
tracking
Web visitor source monitoring
Competitive Intelligence
Sales analytics/forecasting
Mobile-enabled access to sales
intelligence
Knowledge management solution
Email marketing
Campaign management solution
Internal user-generated content
(wiki, forum, blog)
Best-in-Class Strategies
The actionable approaches that organizations are taking, in response to the
top industry pressures associated with channel sales activities, reveal how
the Best-in-Class are focusing their attention on visibility into, and support
of, a more robust partner selling environment.
Figure 4: Consumers of Sales Intelligence by the Best-in-Class
25%
39%
54%
86%
100%
18%
32%
38%
78%
89%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Sales Marketing Executive
Management
Market
Research
Competitive
Intelligence
n = 254
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Best-in-Class All Others
25%
39%
54%
86%
100%
18%
32%
38%
78%
89%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Sales Marketing Executive
Management
Market
Research
Competitive
Intelligence
n = 254
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Best-in-Class All Others

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First, it is important to clarify exactly who is using sales intelligence. In
Figure 4 we initially see the expected that every Best-in-Class company
and most of others feed key intelligence to their sales teams, as well as to
the marketing function but it is worth noting the gaps between the top
performers and other companies even in these somewhat predictable
corporate deployments, with 12% and 10% gaps respectively.
Of additional interest is that fully 42% more Best-in-Class organizations
provide sales intelligence to their C-suite executives, versus other
companies. Sales intelligence is truly an equal opportunity data source:
everyone within the enterprise, from senior management to front-line
quota-carriers can see, absorb and act on vital knowledge about the people,
companies and markets they serve. Finally, while market research and
competitive intelligence staff resources tend to be limited to larger
companies, again the gaps between Best-in-Class and other firms adoption
of sales intelligence speaks to its overall value.
Figure 5: Best-in-Class Strategic Actions
59%
48%
28%
21%
45%
49%
19%
18%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Identify and/or
disqualify sales
prospects wi th
more accuracy
Increase the
overal l quantity of
l eads in the sales
pipeline
Capture and share
our sal es reps'
knowl edge (about
competitors,
customers, trends)
internall y
Reduce the amount
of time sales
representatives
spend searching
for relevant
company/contact
i nformation
n = 254
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Best-in-Cl ass All Others
59%
48%
28%
21%
45%
49%
19%
18%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Identify and/or
disqualify sales
prospects wi th
more accuracy
Increase the
overal l quantity of
l eads in the sales
pipeline
Capture and share
our sal es reps'
knowl edge (about
competitors,
customers, trends)
internall y
Reduce the amount
of time sales
representatives
spend searching
for relevant
company/contact
i nformation
n = 254
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Best-in-Cl ass All Others

Analyzing the strategic actions that companies take in response to the
industry pressures cited above, we see in Figure 5 that the quality/quantity
issue of the sales funnel remains a key approach among all companies
surveyed. The sheer number of leads in the pipeline remains the most
popular action among under-performing companies, however, this strategy
lags, among Best-in-Class organizations, 31% behind the most-often cited
strategy, identifying strong/weak prospects, which is focused on the quality
of pipelined prospects. The top performers understand more than other
firms that moving less-qualified sales prospects out of their view has more
value than simply dumping an unwieldy number of under-vetted
opportunities on the closers team. With sales intelligence about people,
companies and markets associated with individual opportunities, better
decisions can be made about which ones to pursue and which leads to
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abandon, hence addressing the number-one concern among this audience
making more time for salespeople to sell, into those scenarios most likely to
result in revenue.
Strategy Insight: Whats in Your Database?
Survey respondents were asked to identify the overall age and quality of their prospecting database, in the
context of the maturity and effectiveness of their existing intelligence. The 1-5 scale of answers, represented
in Figure 6, shows us that 90% of the Best-in-Class those companies with the best revenue, quota
attainment and customer retention accomplishments selected one of the first three answers that essentially
equal our data is reasonably or highly accurate, compared to 82% of the Industry Average and 56% of
Laggards. While most companies fall into the predictable center of the bell curve in Figure 6, though, it is
worth noting that the more accurate databases are more highly reported by the strong performers, with the
manual, disorganized or intelligence-poor deployments reported far more frequently by the average and
poor-performing companies.
Figure 6: Data Quality and Age by Best-in-Class
14%
40%
26%
17%
7%
38%
45%
7%
3%
8%
32%
42%
14%
4%
2%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Highl y accurate,
up-to-date and
almost universall y
reliable (1)
Strong, but
minor gaps
regularl y
found (2)
OK but
nothing
to brag
about (3)
Reps handle most
intelligence
collection
manuall y (4)
No organized
data about
contacts,
companies or
market intel (5)
n =254
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Best-in-Class Industry Average Laggard
14%
40%
26%
17%
7%
38%
45%
7%
3%
8%
32%
42%
14%
4%
2%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Highl y accurate,
up-to-date and
almost universall y
reliable (1)
Strong, but
minor gaps
regularl y
found (2)
OK but
nothing
to brag
about (3)
Reps handle most
intelligence
collection
manuall y (4)
No organized
data about
contacts,
companies or
market intel (5)
n =254
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s

What does this tell us? Better sales performance is already associated with better sales intelligence data, and
that accuracy, cleanliness and automated access to the content is a hallmark of over-achieving sales teams. In
Chapter Two, we will learn about the business competencies and enabling technologies that brought the
Best-in-Class to this point, as well as the significant differences in how these companies deliver content to
their sales practitioners.

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Case Study Gallagher Benefit Services
Gallagher Benefit Services is an international benefits planning, delivery
and administration services provider. It has approximately 350 field sales
reps distributed across the world. Two years ago, in an initiative to more
effectively empower its sales team with information that would
contribute to their existing selling initiatives and improve individual and
overall sales productivity, the company adopted a formal sales intelligence
program. As an organization, we have a fundamental belief that data is
critical to making relevant business decisions; the value of using
information to support our sales team was obvious, says Sean Schubert,
VP of Sales Strategy and Management at the company.
Gallaghers sales intelligence deployment is supported by several key
business processes. First, it utilizes a CRM system to capture, store and
update information about existing accounts, contacts and sales
opportunities. Were always looking to simplify the number of systems
that our sales reps use to access information, so we use our CRM as the
primary location to enter, update and access customer and prospect
information, explains Schubert. The CRM system is also utilized to track
prospect engagements and sales pipeline activities by sales management.
Additionally, Gallagher also utilizes tools to gather additional targeted
intelligence on the marketplace, customers and prospects. The
information captured through these tools is then shared with the sales
organization through the CRM system. Supporting our sales team with
external intelligence is crucial in enabling the reps with relevant
information that they can use in their conversations, and eventually in
closing deals, said Schubert.
Another aspect of the companys sales intelligence initiatives is executive
support for the internal sharing of sales rep knowledge on market trends,
geographies, industries and the like. This organizational focus opens up
the lines of communication amongst sales reps to share best practices
and empowers all with more relevant information. To this point,
Schubert adds, This transfer of information improves the ability of our
sales reps to identify opportunities. Gallagher also frequently analyzes its
customer database in association with information captured from
external sources, and internal data, to identify cross-sell and up-sell
opportunities.
To date, Gallagher has achieved improvements in both revenue and
reduced the time it takes sales reps to obtain prospect or customer
information. Looking ahead, were expecting to also achieve
improvements in both shortening of our sales cycle and improving of our
win rates, concludes Schubert.
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Chapter Two:
Benchmarking Requirements for Success
Effective channel sales deployments play a critical role in an organization's
ability to turn these strategies into profit. The following sections provide an
analysis of how top performers distinguish themselves from other
companies through the implementation of capabilities and enablers that
support excellence in deploying best practices in partner-oriented selling.
Aberdeen Group analyzed the aggregated metrics of surveyed companies to
determine whether their performance ranked as Best-in-Class, Industry
Average, or Laggard. In addition to having common performance levels, each
class also shared characteristics in five key categories: (1) process (the
approaches they take to execute daily operations); (2) organization
(corporate focus and collaboration among stakeholders); (3) knowledge
management (contextualizing data and exposing it to key stakeholders); (4)
technology (the selection of the appropriate tools and the effective
deployment of those tools); and (5) performance management (the
ability of the organization to measure its results to improve its business).
These characteristics (identified in Table 3) serve as a guideline for best
practices, and correlate directly with Best-in-Class performance across the
key metrics.
Table 3: The Competitive Framework
Best-in-Class Average Laggards
Process for tracking prospect engagement (email click-
throughs, website visits, etc.)
66% 50% 36%
Defined sales milestones or stages include criteria based on
the use and analysis of sales intelligence data, i.e. validating the
accuracy of prospect contact/company data
Process
64% 49% 33%
Sales intelligence is enhanced by data shared by other
functions within our company, such as marketing, customer
service or operations
Organization
68% 49% 46%
Sales-focused, centralized repository of account, contact and
sales opportunity information
86% 63% 62%
Analysis/segmentation of our customer base to identify up-sell
or cross-sell opportunities
Knowledge
53% 42% 18%
Fast Facts
Only 3% of Best-in-Class
companies indicate that their
typical sales reps spend
more than 50% of their time
searching for prospect or
customer data; this number
rises to 8% for the Industry
Average and 24% among
Laggard firms
75% of the Best-in-Class
currently or plan, in the near
term to integrate sales
intelligence into their CRM
deployment; only 58% of
Laggards report the same

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Best-in-Class Average Laggards
Enabling
Technology
85% Sales analytics
/ forecasting
81% Email
marketing
72% Lead
management
solution
71% Web analytics
or web site visitor
tracking
62% Competitive
Intelligence
56% Campaign
management
solution
54% Web visitor
source monitoring
44% Internal user-
generated content
(wiki, forum, blog)
63% Sales analytics
/ forecasting
71% Email
marketing
49% Lead
management
solution
49% Web analytics
or web site visitor
tracking
44% Competitive
Intelligence
40% Campaign
management
solution
37% Web visitor
source monitoring
38% Internal user-
generated content
(wiki, forum, blog)
55% Sales analytics
/ forecasting
56% Email
marketing
28% Lead
management
solution
36% Web analytics
or web site visitor
tracking
41% Competitive
Intelligence
20% Campaign
management
solution
29% Web visitor
source monitoring
19% Internal user-
generated content
(wiki, forum, blog)
Percentage of sales reps spending less than half their time
searching for prospect or customer data
Performance
100% 94% 76%
Figure 7: Year-over-Year Corporate Performance
-4.1%
-5.0%
12.7%
6.4%
5.5%
1.7%
-0.8%
1.5%
-3.2%
-5.0%
-2.0%
1.0%
4.0%
7.0%
10.0%
13.0%
Average deal
size or annual
contract value
Reduction of
sales cycle
Sales
forecast
accuracy
n = 254
Y
e
a
r
-
o
v
e
r
-
y
e
a
r

c
h
a
n
g
e
-4.1%
-5.0%
12.7%
6.4%
5.5%
1.7%
-0.8%
1.5%
-3.2%
-5.0%
-2.0%
1.0%
4.0%
7.0%
10.0%
13.0%
Average deal
size or annual
contract value
Reduction of
sales cycle
Sales
forecast
accuracy
n = 254
Y
e
a
r
-
o
v
e
r
-
y
e
a
r

c
h
a
n
g
e

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Capabilities and Enablers
Based on the findings of the Competitive Framework and interviews with
end users, the Best-in-Class demonstrate that a highly identifiable set of
corporate capabilities and enablers can lead to measurable business success
including the highly relevant year-over-year metrics performance seen in
Figure 7 through the deployment of specific sales intelligence
methodologies and technologies. Additional Aberdeen research is cited to
further support these positive trends.
Process
Sixty-six percent (66%) of Best-in-Class companies report using a process
for tracking how their prospect or customer engages with them.
The traditional means by which this can be accomplished are with web
analytics or other technology tools that monitor the opening or click-
throughs of email marketing messages, as well as of web site visits and
behavior. In the context of sales intelligence, this process, which is deployed
32% and 83% more often by these top performers when compared to the
Industry Average (66% for Best-in-Class firms vs. 50%, and Laggards 66% vs.
36%), is a crucial tool in understanding how a sales target is reacting to the
seller's messaging. This better empowers the sales practitioner to customize
their message and timing around the newly understood behaviors of the
prospect.
Sales is an art but you need
organizational and proven
methods of managing
intelligence, so you don't have
to reinvent the wheel.
~ Wais Asefi, CEO,
Textmunication

Additionally, nearly twice as many Best-in-Class companies than Laggards
believe, evidently, that in managing their sales staff, "not only can you lead a
horse to water, but you can also make him drink." This reversal of the old
aphorism is appropriate in the environment of sales technology, because
while sales professionals are traditionally not early adopters, the research
proves that management oversight can significantly empower team members
with better tools that lead to better results, as evidenced by the 94% delta
between the Best-in-Class and Laggards in defining sales stages in part by
associating formal, tracked and reported aspects of the sales intelligence
being collected and used by the team.
Tracking prospect engagement and marrying sales intelligence use to
advancing sales stages are not only hallmarks of Best-in-Class capabilities;
they can also address the quality/quantity issues that have been discussed
above, in the context of focusing sales closers on those accounts and
opportunities most worthy of their time. Figure 8 showcases how the
different maturity classes report the degree of their problems in managing
the flow of sales-related information within their enterprise. Drinking from
a fire hose is a far more manageable problem for the top performers, while
an insubstantial data foundation for the selling funnel is far more often a
concern for Laggards. Now that we have reviewed how these different
kinds of achievers have applied business processes to the issues, lets look at
their organizational competencies.
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Figure 8: Effective Use of Sales Intelligence: Quality vs. Quantity
55%
48%
34%
32%
29%
19%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
We have a problem with
information overload but
cope with it through
processes and
technologies
We do not have enough
information available about
the people, companies
and markets to whom
we sell
n = 254
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
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o
f

R
e
s
p
o
n
d
e
n
t
s
55%
48%
34%
32%
29%
19%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
We have a problem with
information overload but
cope with it through
processes and
technologies
We do not have enough
information available about
the people, companies
and markets to whom
we sell
n = 254
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
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e

o
f

R
e
s
p
o
n
d
e
n
t
s
Organization
Share and share alike is a lesson well-learned from the Best-in-Class, more
than two-thirds of which enhance sales intelligence with other
departmental data to ensure that other customer-facing staff (such as
marketing, service or operations) are seeing and interfacing with prospects
and buyers in a unified fashion. Aberdeen research published in Providing a
360 View of the Customer - Better Service - Higher Sales (March 2010)
showcased a Best-in-Class group (those with the best customer retention,
satisfaction and growth in annual spend) with more than twice the level of
adoption of all internal stakeholders share a technology-based common
view of the customer, compared to Laggards (52% vs. 25%). This
acknowledgement that multiple repositories of customer data exist within
many organizations takes a proactive approach to resolving the business
problems that can result from silod content, by ensuring that sales
intelligence, along with accounting, service, marketing and other information
about prospects/customers, is both accurate and available to all relevant
stakeholders within the company.
Knowledge Management
In order to achieve the above-referenced inter-departmental collaboration
around sales intelligence, Best-in-Class companies employ a sales-focused,
centralized repository of account, contact and sales opportunity
information at a significantly high rate overall which is 26% higher than in
the Sales Intelligence: Preparing for Smarter Selling (February, 2010) research
as well as 37% more frequently than other firms (86% vs. 63%). These
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companies not only appreciate the value of capturing intelligence on their
prospects, customers and markets; they recognize the need to store all of
this data in a logical, accessible bank. This is where all sales activity can be
focused, from contact management details on people and company
hierarchies, to current deals in play and mission-critical information on
markets, legislation, compliance and other potential sales intelligence that
can impact winning or losing on opportunities in the funnel. The short
technology answer to the question of how most effectively to accomplish
this, is to incorporate sales intelligence feeds in the corporate CRM system;
this will be discussed in the Technology Insight to follow.
Figure 9: Push vs. Pull of Sales Intelligence
28%
31%
50%
21%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
Push/manual
mix or heavy
reliance on
push
Predominantl y
manual
n = 254
P
e
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n
t
a
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o
f

R
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s
p
o
n
d
e
n
t
s
Best-in-Class Laggard
28%
31%
50%
21%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
Push/manual
mix or heavy
reliance on
push
Predominantl y
manual
n = 254
P
e
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c
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n
t
a
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o
f

R
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s
p
o
n
d
e
n
t
s
Best-in-Class Laggard

Maintaining accuracy of
information on key individuals
who are your prospect /
customer decision-makers and
continuously feeding them fresh
and relevant information on the
value proposition of your
product / service as it relates
to their internal business needs
[is important].
~ Philip Treem, Principal, PAT
Consultants

Having a repository in place is a good thing, then but using this
information effectively is another concern among end-users. Given the
tremendous amount of sales intelligence that is available, and the precious
time that experienced field sales staff or closers have to offer around the
most likely-to-close deals, its natural that the Best-in-Class are better at
automating the flow of relevant data to their team. In Figure 9, the degree of
push versus pull of sales intelligence among the maturity classes supports
this point. The traditional methodology of "pull" refers to the activities of
individual sales reps, or perhaps their sales operations, inside sales or
external telemarketing support system, that represent a manual, self-
administered effort to find information for themselves, most commonly on
the internet. Better performance metrics, however, reside with those who
focus their energies on "push" technologies, which provide automated and
company-administered paths for the delivery of relevant company, target
and market data to sales practitioners.
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A secondary knowledge management capability associated far more
frequently with Best-in-Class sales organizations than other companies is to
analyze/segment the customer database to identify up-sell or
cross-sell opportunities, with the top performers nearly three-times as
likely as Laggards to do so. Indeed in Providing a 360 View of the Customer -
Better Service - Higher Sales (March 2010), only 7% of the Best-in-Class
indicated that they rarely achieve our full potential when it comes to net
client value, compared to 11% of Industry Average and 16% of Laggard
companies. Conversely, the top performers indicated we are a dominant
provider in our market and have achieved full penetration (potential
customer spend on our services/products) of almost all our accounts at a
7% rate, versus 3% and 1% for Industry Average and Laggard firms. These
trends marry the optimization of customers potential spend, with creating
clear and accurate views of the customer or prospect, both of which kinds
of organizations can be better and more effectively penetrated, managed and
monetized with the types of sales intelligence described above. Indeed, an
analysis comparing survey respondents adopting this capability with those
who dont, shows the former group having grown their overall team
attainment of quota by 4.1% on a year-over-year basis, whereas the non-
adopters tallied an annual reduction of 1.2%.
Technology Enablers
Among the many solutions represented in Table 3, a number of them
showcase significant adoption rate differentials between the Best-in-Class
and other sales teams, and represent strong enablers of success. These
technology options are not, per se, core functions of typical sales
intelligence solutions that are commercially available to end-users; rather
they represent a collection of performance-enhancing solutions that can be
integrated with sales intelligence data, and supported by the best practices
detailed above, to achieve optimal sales effectiveness.
According to June 2010 Aberdeen research among 422 companies
for Sales Forecasting: Analytics to the Rescue!, 81% of Best-in-Class
companies (showing the most significant yearly gains in team quota
attainment and revenue per sales rep) deployed formal sales
analytics and forecasting solutions, compared with 55% of
Industry Average and 34% of Laggard firms. These offerings provide
an enterprise-wide data flow into the forecasting process, thus
creating a more refined snapshot of future revenue and empowering
more efficient, margin-driven sales activity as well as more pure
selling time by the sales team itself. With better sales intelligence
about prospects behavior, personnel and market dynamics, better
forecasts and increased selling time are natural outcomes of the
same kind of best practices.
In December 2010, Aberdeen published Email Marketing: Customers
Take it Personally, in which the Best-in-Class was defined as
companies achieving the strongest marketing-generated sales
pipeline and annual growth in revenue and email click-through rates.
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These firms consistently supported sales efforts with email
marketing-driven initiatives such as sharing prospect/customer
activity history, visibility to sales management of campaign-specific
results, and customer and web analytics, more frequently than
other organizations. In implementing both of these solutions
alongside sales intelligence, companies can be assured of delivering
the right message, to the right audience, with less waste and more
accurate tracking of prospects through the sales funnel.
At 2.5-times the rate of Laggards (72% vs. 28%), Best-in-Class
companies studied in Optimizing The Marketing-to-Sales Lead Lifecycle
(March 2010) adopted automated demand generation and lead
management solutions, which help marketers track and report on
campaign lead generation results. With current, clean and relevant
sales intelligence data accessed in a unified information management
environment by both marketing and sales leadership, companies
such as these top performers (judged by marketing contribution to
pipeline and revenue) have the ability to more efficiently locate,
indentify, communicate with, and track the progress of external
participants in the suspect-prospect-customer management lifecycle.
Using competitive intelligence to sell more effectively is not a
universal practice, but the Best-in-Class include it in their solution
mix 36% more frequently than Industry Average companies, and
51% more than Laggards. Solutions that feed customized and/or
configurable data about a companys peer group help top
performers obtain the latest news and information about
competitors, which in turn can be used to flag people, companies or
market niches within the sales intelligence database that are worthy
of increase attention from marketing sales or service perspectives.
Comparing the performance of competitive intelligence users to
other firms, we also see significant deltas: 79% vs. 64% overall
current team attainment of sales quota; 74% vs. 56% sales forecast
accuracy; and 60% vs. 42% percentage of full-time sales reps
achieving annual quota.

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Technology Insight
Within the current research, the use of CRM is, somewhat surprising, not
universal. While 63% of Laggards and 79% of Industry Average companies
report such a deployment, 81% of the Best-in-Class do so meaning that
roughly one in five top-performing companies have achieved strong sales
effectiveness results without the benefit of a formal CRM solution.
Figure 10: CRM Integration of Sales Intelligence

Best-in-Class Best-in-Class Industry Average Industry Average Laggard Laggard
30%
75%
17%
74%
22%
58%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Current or planned
CRM integration of
sales intelligence
No integration,
no plans
n = 254
P
e
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n
t
a
g
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o
f

R
e
s
p
o
n
d
e
n
t
s
30%
75%
17%
74%
22%
58%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Current or planned
CRM integration of
sales intelligence
No integration,
no plans
n = 254
P
e
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e
n
t
a
g
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o
f

R
e
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p
o
n
d
e
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s

What we do see, however, is that among companies with an existing CRM
deployment in place, the integration of sales intelligence data into this
foundational technology is crucial. The vast majority of such companies
concur, though we see more of the Best-in-Class doing so, as opposed to
higher numbers of Industry Average and Laggard firms holding firm against
any sort of integration. It is easy to understand how companies are better
equipped to meet sales quotas when the CRM record of a contact or
organization includes not only internally-generated information about a
target, but relevant data about the individuals, company or market in
which the selling conversation needs to take place. And, of note, is that
CRM integration on the whole was at a higher rate among 2010 Sales
Intelligence respondents, at 71% vs. the 68% currently integrating or
planning to do so in the 2011 data.

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Performance Management
Time is of the essence in sales, and 100% of anything tells a powerful story.
This is the percentage of Best-in-Class companies sales reps that spend less
than half their time searching for prospect or customer data, and therefore
ostensibly more time prospecting, selling and attaining quota. In the case of
Laggards, in particular, more than one-quarter of reps spend more than half
their business hours in pursuit of names, email addresses, company
locations, financial information and the like. Considering that in Streamlining
the Top of the Funnel: How Inside Sales Teams Source, Qualify, and Close
Business (February 2011), sales team members average 5.4 phone attempts,
3.7 email attempts and 2.7 voicemails left per target account, even before
not connecting, clearly the need to waste minimal time simply finding
contact information is a priority and accomplishment among top
performers in the current research.

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Chapter Three:
Required Actions
Fast Facts
The typical company
responding to the Sales
Intelligence research survey
reports an average annual
revenue of $631k, 3736 total
employees and 220 sales
team members
The most common delivery
modalities of sales
intelligence, among all
companies, are within email
messaging (56%), manual
employee search (46%),
integrated into the CRM/SFA
solution (45%), and via
spreadsheets (35%)

Whether a company is trying to move its performance in sales effectiveness
from Laggard to Industry Average, or Industry Average to Best-in-Class, the
following actions will help spur the necessary performance improvements:
Laggard Steps to Success
Know your customer. Laggard companies are less than half as
likely as the Industry Average, and three-times less so than Best-in-
Class firms, to unify the selling organization's disparate silos of data
around the customer they would like to up-sell or cross-sell. Invest
in a process to bring together different databases owned by
marketing, sales, accounting or legal departments. Sales intelligence
data and the methodologies with which they are gathered are better
supported when any market-facing team member is more likely to
have an accurate and consistent view into the customer's profile,
such as expiration of service contracts or corporate changes that
merit new revenue opportunities. This process can also help guard
against overlapping or inconsistent sales activity that could confuse
or frustrate a customer or prospect.
Build out CRM adoption by using sales intelligence as a
carrot. It is vital to motivate reps to migrate toward the
technology platform where their prospects and deals live. While
total CRM adoption is unlikely or even necessary among any
give sales team, this practice simply means empowering your team
with better prospect data in the context of the tool you want them
to use. Note: previous Aberdeen research has clearly and
repeatedly identified carrots as more effective than sticks in
terms of driving CRM adoption so dont consider withholding
commissions from non-compliant reps, thinking that will result in
better data or better business results.
Set the pace of the sales team by creating logical stages within
the sales cycle, at which progress toward closed deals can be
objectively measured, as well as reality checks conducted around
necessary activities and data collection/use that validate the
movement of sales opportunities to each successive stage. Marrying
the identification and deployment of key sales intelligence data
points to these watershed moments is a practice adopted by nearly
two-thirds of the Best-in-Class and half the Industry Average, but
only a third of Laggards require their sales reps to verify contacts,
decision-makers, buyers, business units and the like at various sales
stages in order to ensure the appropriate movement of deals
through the sales cycle. This will minimize negative effects of
misguided sales forecasting, as well as contribute to a better selling
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batting average for companies that have built out a solid, holistic
understanding of their prospect or customer.
Dont leave marketing out of the discussion regarding
optimizing your prospect and customer intelligence for maximum
bottom-line results. With twice as many Industry Average firms
deploying campaign management solutions as Laggards, and even
higher rates among the Best-in-Class, we can directly associate
better performance with use of this technology enabler. Campaign
management tools allow both marketing and sales team members to
better identify the accurate recipients of product messaging,
understand more precisely which relevant prospects are reacting to
marketing outreach, and ultimately be most receptive to direct sales
contact. Better win/loss rates, more time to sell and diminished
misguided messaging are the end results in this scenario.
Industry Average Steps to Success
Putting it simply, to achieve
success through Sales
Intelligence tools one must
invest in the tools, deploy them
and ensure that all users are
trained...not once but
continually.
~ Jason Bean, Director of
Business Development,
Looptworks

Emulate The Borg from Star Trek by capturing, storing and
cleaning your sales intelligence with a strategic, long-term vision
based on knowing every possible data point about your entire
market. This may seem ambitious, but 86% of the Best-in-Class have
made progress toward such a goal by supporting a sales-focused,
centralized repository of account, contact and sales opportunity
information. More than one-third of the Industry Average fail to
take full advantage of the systems and processes necessary to help
the companys long-term success out-live the functional life of any
individual, deal or campaign.
Share and share alike the full breadth of your sales intelligence
repository with all internal colleagues, if not your selling partners as
well. Industry Average firms are 39% less likely than the Best-in-
Class to enhance data shared by other functions within our
company, such as marketing, customer service or operations,
meaning they are missing out on the opportunity to leverage their
own companys non-sales resources. Certainly these co-workers
come into possession of updated news, contacts and other vital
information about customers, or even prospects, that can benefit
the sales organization, which is well-advised to avoid holding
exclusivity to the sales intelligence data.
See and be seen by working with marketing to deploy web site
visitor tracking and/or web analytics solutions, to better identify
your best prospects by understanding their consumer behavior.
Much as Laggards are directed, above, to refresh their emphasis on
campaign management solutions, which help organize the outflow of
efficient communications to sales prospects, using web analytics to
gauge and measure the impact of these messages can directly assist
with the sales teams ability to determine which prospects are
worthy of more aggressive follow-through activity. While nearly half
of the Industry Average are on board with this technology enabler,
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they trail the Best-in-Class by 31% in reaping the benefits of this
solution.
Best-in-Class Steps to Success
Get social by more aggressively adopting internal collaboration
tools and methodologies, such as forums, blogs, wikis and chat.
While the Best-in-Class are more likely than other companies to
currently use these solutions, fewer than half are on the social
media bandwagon, which has consistently been showcased in
Aberdeen research as valuable in both sales effectiveness and
improving revenue growth. While the demise of round-robin email
strings may not yet be imminent, the widely available tools that help
disparate sales, marketing and other customer-facing personnel
efficiently communicate about prospects, deals, promotions, pricing,
forecasts and the like, are a wise choice for all sales teams moving
forward. The Best-in-Class companies results bear out this
approach.
Consider the cloud for the deployment of sales intelligence.
Fewer than half the top performers deploy sales intelligence
initiatives with little or no assistance from the IT department,
which in most cases means no on-premise software or data security
issues to slow the pace of sales enablement due to technology
barriers inside the company. While companies in certain industry
segments such as healthcare or financial services are understandably
reticent to move sensitive data outside the corporate firewall, the
general trend among sales technology users is toward hosted,
cloud-based deployments.
Summary
Sales intelligence is certainly not an oxymoron, despite jokes to the
contrary. Contemporary, technology-enabled sales teams are increasingly
arming their team members with real-time, vital data about the people,
companies and industries to whom they sell, and from whom they extract
their livelihood. As Figure 11 shows, the spending trends among survey
respondents support this assertion, with all companies, particularly the Best-
in-Class performers, increasing their budgets and appetites for valuable
information that enables their frontline sellers to maximize their business
results.
continued

Intelligence
Page 25

Summary
Figure 11: Sales Intelligence Budgets: On the Rise
26%
31%
42%
13%
30%
17%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Increased 15%
or more in
last year
Planning 10%
or more
increase
n = 254
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

o
f

R
e
s
p
o
n
d
e
n
t
s
26%
31%
42%
13%
30%
17%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Increased 15%
or more in
last year
Planning 10%
or more
increase
n = 254
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

o
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R
e
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s

Certainly no executive would send their sales team into the virtual business
battlefield with one hand tied behind their back. By deploying the proven
sales intelligence capabilities and enablers associated with optimal revenue
growth, quota attainment and customer retention, companies can envision
themselves achieving the same Best-in-Class results, through such a holistic
approach to managing key prospect and customer data.
Intelligence
Page 26

Appendix A:
Research Methodology
Between March and April 2011, Aberdeen examined the use, experiences
and the intentions of 254 enterprises using services and technologies that
impact the results from their sales intelligence practices.
Study Focus
Responding executives, primarily in
sales management roles, completed
an online survey that included
questions designed to determine
the following:
The degree to which sales
intelligence is deployed in their
organization and the impact it has
on achieving their business goals
The structure, effectiveness and
satisfaction with existing sales
intelligence implementations
Current and planned use of sales
intelligence to achieve desired
changes in revenue, quota and
deal size
The benefits, if any, that have
been derived from sales
intelligence initiatives
The study aimed to identify
emerging best practices for sales
intelligence usage, and to provide a
framework by which readers could
assess their own management
capabilities.

Aberdeen supplemented this online survey effort with interviews with select
survey respondents, gathering additional information on sales intelligence
strategies, experiences, and results.
Responding enterprises included the following:
Job title: The research sample included respondents with the
following job titles: Manager (26%), CEO / President (19%),
Director (17%), EVP / SVP / VP (14%), General Manager / Managing
Director (7%) and other (17%).
Department / function: The research sample included respondents
from the following departments or functions: sales and business
development (52%), marketing (20%), corporate management (9%)
and other (19%).
Industry: The research sample included respondents exclusively from
software (20%), IT consulting and services (18%),
telecommunications equipment/services (13%), financial services
(10%), transportation/logistics (6%), wholesale/distribution (6%),
industrial product/equipment manufacturing (6%),
health/medical/dental devices & services (5%), computer equipment,
hardware or peripherals (4%) and other (12%).
Geography: The majority of respondents (71%) were from the
Americas. Remaining respondents were from the EMEA region
(20%) and Asia-Pacific (9%).
Company size: 13% of respondents were from large enterprises
(annual revenues above US $1 billion); 29% were from midsize
enterprises (annual revenues between $50 million and $1 billion);
and 58% of respondents were from small businesses (annual
revenues of $50 million or less).
Headcount: 26% of respondents were from large enterprises
(headcount greater than 1,000 employees); 20% were from midsize
enterprises (headcount between 100 and 999 employees); and 54%
of respondents were from small businesses (headcount between 1
and 99 employees).

Intelligence
Page 27

Table 4: The PACE Framework Key
Overview
Aberdeen applies a methodology to benchmark research that evaluates the business pressures, actions, capabilities,
and enablers (PACE) that indicate corporate behavior in specific business processes. These terms are defined as
follows:
Pressures external forces that impact an organizations market position, competitiveness, or business
operations (e.g., economic, political and regulatory, technology, changing customer preferences, competitive)
Actions the strategic approaches that an organization takes in response to industry pressures (e.g., align the
corporate business model to leverage industry opportunities, such as product / service strategy, target markets,
financial strategy, go-to-market, and sales strategy)
Capabilities the business process competencies required to execute corporate strategy (e.g., skilled people,
brand, market positioning, viable products / services, ecosystem partners, financing)
Enablers the key functionality of technology solutions required to support the organizations enabling business
practices (e.g., development platform, applications, network connectivity, user interface, training and support,
partner interfaces, data cleansing, and management)
Table 5: The Competitive Framework Key
Overview

The Aberdeen Competitive Framework defines enterprises
as falling into one of the following three levels of practices
and performance:
Best-in-Class (20%) Practices that are the best
currently being employed and are significantly superior to
the Industry Average, and result in the top industry
performance.
Industry Average (50%) Practices that represent the
average or norm, and result in average industry
performance.
Laggards (30%) Practices that are significantly behind
the average of the industry, and result in below average
performance.

In the following categories:
Process What is the scope of process
standardization? What is the efficiency and
effectiveness of this process?
Organization How is your company currently
organized to manage and optimize this particular
process?
Knowledge What visibility do you have into key
data and intelligence required to manage this process?
Technology What level of automation have you
used to support this process? How is this automation
integrated and aligned?
Performance What do you measure? How
frequently? Whats your actual performance?

Table 6: The Relationship Between PACE and the Competitive Framework
PACE and the Competitive Framework How They Interact
Aberdeen research indicates that companies that identify the most influential pressures and take the most
transformational and effective actions are most likely to achieve superior performance. The level of competitive
performance that a company achieves is strongly determined by the PACE choices that they make and how well they
execute those decisions.
Intelligence
Page 28

Appendix B:
Related Aberdeen Research
Related Aberdeen research that forms a companion or reference to this
report includes:
The Extended Sales Enterprise: Channeling Better Results (March 2011)
Streamlining the Top of the Funnel: How Inside Sales Teams Source,
Qualify and Close Business (February 2011)
Sales Mobility: Quotas Untethered (November 2010)
Sales Training: Deploying Knowledge, Process and Technology to
Consistently Hit Quota; September 2010
Sales and Marketing Alignment:
Collaboration + Cooperation = Peak Performance (September 2010),
Sales Performance Management: Getting Everyone on the Same Page;
August, 2010
Sales Forecasting: Analytics to the Rescue!; June 2010
Optimizing Lead-To-Win: Shrinking the Sales Cycle and Focusing Closers
on Sealing More Deals; May 2010
Providing a 360 View of the Customer: Better Service - Higher Sales;
March 2010
Information on these and any other Aberdeen publications can be found at
www.aberdeen.com.

Author: Peter Ostrow, Research Director, Sales Effectiveness
(peter.ostrow@aberdeen.com)
For more than two decades, Aberdeen's research has been helping corporations worldwide become Best-in-Class.
Having benchmarked the performance of more than 644,000 companies, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to provide
organizations with the facts that matter the facts that enable companies to get ahead and drive results. That's why
our research is relied on by more than 2.5 million readers in over 40 countries, 90%of the Fortune 1,000, and 93%of
the Technology 500.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeens research provides insight and analysis to the Harte-Hanks community of
local, regional, national and international marketing executives. Combined, we help our customers leverage the power
of insight to deliver innovative multichannel marketing programs that drive business-changing results. For additional
information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 854-5200, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call
(800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.
This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group. Aberdeen Group's methodologies
provide for objective fact-based research and represent the best analysis available at the time of publication. Unless
otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group, Inc. and may not be
reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent by
Aberdeen Group, Inc. (2011a)

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Understanding the Science of Sales Intelligence

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