Artificial intelligence for lead generation

Within the sales cycle, prospection is a huge part. Sometimes the core part which undoubtedly impacts customer support and loyalty. And there is no space for a corporate data provider not to have a strategy for prospection.Among the corporate or contact data providers, we find the usual suspects and leading players: Hoovers, D&B;, LexisNexis, Kompass, Zoominfo, Onesource, DowJones, Jigsaw, InfoUSA. Some of these dinosaurs retrieve their corporate information from legacy sources (usually government-related official databases). Some newcomers build their databases on social networks, and some others from their customers’ contributions (like the great Jigsaw service). They use intensive marketing to capture a slice of this huge market, each claiming the greatest volume of contacts and companies and the best international coverage. It is said that the overall business data providers’ market is close to $3B a year.Business data providers address two types of practical needs: the first is to provide corporate and contact data « on-request» i.e. when the user has already spotted what he looks for. The second need is to provide lists of contacts and companies based on the general criteria expressed by the user: the sales person can look for hardware manufacturers, located in Cupertino, with more than 10k employees, a EBIT of more than 25% and a CEO named Steve…Basically, this is exactly how it works now. The biggest your database is, the more criteria you can offer and the more attractive your service is.

Can the market propose better alternatives?

Let’s have a look at the financial sector for instance. The way we operate on the stock exchanges has dramatically changed about 30 years ago. Most of stock exchange buildings are now empty. Everything is in computers. Players like Bloomberg have injected a lot of new data to ease the traders’ decisions. The sector has hired actuaries and computer experts to develop artificial intelligence to optimize trading. Most of the transactions are now ordered by computers with highly complex algorithms. A trader back from the 70’s would have no chance to earn pennies in the courtyard.

So, could we do much better than create company lists based on user criteria? Isn’t it the right time to start considering that sales people deserve the same inputs as financial traders?

CRMs and messaging systems are full of intentions, successes, failures, opportunities. A smart analysis of all these signals could open a new era of sales intelligence. No need for the salesman to configure multiple search filters: artificial intelligence can adapt and propose valuable new targets while the user does what it does best: exchange & convince.

For full disclosure, Marc and I have chatted around this challenge a long time ago, while brainstorming about what could be IKO System. We have worked on this specific project for months. The artificial intelligence engine we designed for lead generation will be out next week. In beta, as always… We dropped the idea of mixing CRM and Messaging (maybe too complex or just too intrusive). We keep that for later. We spotted another huge data source to mine: social networks. We already have the experience (and running features) to put sales artificial intelligence on top of social networks. We issued action insights such as «who is the best partner for your business», «who is your best contact to expand your revenues», or «who is the main influencer on your market». Users love these features as long as they find them relevant. But it is much more complex to develop a system that continuously trains itself to « understand » the sales targets, the tactics and the underline sales strategy of a user.

We also tried to translate the essence of social networks in this engine. The fact is that there are usually hundreds or thousands of potential companies that fit with your sales strategy. This is where social relationships play their parts: it is much more efficient to address prospects where you have insider contacts, or when you have a close relationship who can introduce you to the right target.

I’m proud of what we are about to release, even if there is long road forward to build a lead generation smart engine digging into all user interactions.