INSIDEVIEW LAUNCHES SALESVIEW
Salesopedia

March 18, 2008

Blog by Clayton Shold - read original post

Late last summer I came across InsideView and thought they were on to something. I was so impressed I contacted their CEO, Umberto Milletti who agreed to a podcast interview. Well Umberto and his team have not been idle. Today they rolled out SalesView.

Late last week I had a preview of what was coming, compliments of InsideView’s Chief Marketing Officer Rand Schulman. Rand walked me through this new product using some Silicon Valley terms like Socialprise and mash-up. Ok, I admit, when I got off the call I went to Wikipedia to find out that ‘mash-up’ meant “a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool.” I can see why they wanted to come up with one word. As for Socialprise it’s “the natural convergence of social media and enterprise applications, emerging as a mash-up (there’s that word again) of both the information and user experience of these previously separate universes.” Got all that?

As a salesperson, what does any of this have to do with you? Great question. Tell me you have heard of Zoom, Hoovers, LinkedIn, Reuters and Google. My guess is you have. All are rich resources for information and there are many more like them out there. What about Facebook, Plaxo, Digg, Spock, Spoke, and Wikipedia to name a few?

Today’s reality is we are seeing an exponential growth of both content and sources of information. How does one determine what information is current, accurate and relevant to what you need? And where do you begin your search with so many options?

Along comes InsideView, and as of today, SalesView which can “bolts on” to your CRM system, or not. If you don’t work within a CRM environment you’re still in luck, more on that in a moment. SalesView is built on InsideView’s pioneering Business Search and Intelligence platform, and as they put it, “employs a unique meta-aggregation technology that delivers critical intelligence on companies, decision-makers, personal and professional connections to drive customer engagements.” Put another way, they give you “intel” you can use.

Imagine if you are in B2B sales and you wanted to stay current on a number of companies or individuals so if something occurred with any of them, you automatically received a notification that was timely, extraordinarily relevant and match your user defined specs. That is what InsideView does for you – automatically!

They monitor thousands of data sources, including specialized research providers, news sources, social networks, job boards and even blogs like this one. InsideView’s proprietary software does the “looking” for you based on the “criteria” you identify. Think of it as an automated prospecting tool.

Can you picture an automated prospecting tool that allows you to accelerate the sales cycle by identifying and leveraging existing relationships? What about having your CRM system ‘mash-up’ with all this information thus converting your CRM system from a sales management tool into a selling tool? I thought that might get your attention.

Here’s the good news.

InsideView is offering a FREE version of the application to enable any salesperson to tap into SalesView’s intelligence to uncover fresh opportunities and close more business.

Their PRO and Team version of the product come loaded with deeper feature sets designed for power and enterprise users. InsideView is working with industry leading partners to deliver SalesView to customers worldwide, including Landslide Technologies, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM.

Why do I get so excited about technology like this?

In our increasingly complex challenge of doing commerce in the sales arena today we need all the help we can get to manage the huge volumes of information available. I believe you should be investing your time connecting with prospects and customers, not doing research. SalesView allows you to do this. Umberto and his team “get it”. These guys have taken the “search and employ” to a whole new level! Check out their website at InsideView.com.