You need to find a Data.com replacement soon, given that Salesforce is retiring it in just a few months. But you don’t want to rush into a decision. And you don’t want to go without data cleansing and sales intelligence. That’s a sure way to muddy up your CRM data and put a drain on your sales and marketing productivity. So what do you do? We suggest you take a thoughtful approach to keeping your sales and marketing data in tip-top shape.
Without intervention, CRM data decays at an alarming rate. If you do nothing, as much as 70% of your data will be incorrect a year from now. Even considering just the impact from people switching jobs, 20-25% of your data will be bad in a year. That means ineffective targeting, time wasted chasing bad leads, and missed opportunities.
Since you only have a few months to find an alternative to Data.com before Salesforce stops renewing licenses, now’s the time to prepare for a Data.com replacement.
There are 7 critical steps to take as you move towards a Data.com alternative, beginning with assessing your current data and your data needs. We’ll address the first step in this post, while the following posts in this series will walk you through cleaning your current data, filling your data gaps, and selecting a Data.com replacement from among Data.com competitors.
Step 1: Assess Your Data Needs
By taking a deep look at your existing data, understanding its gaps, and planning for your current and future needs, you’ll be able to make a better decision on what Data.com alternative is best for you. This assessment should look at what Data.com products you’re using and include a survey of your sales and marketing teams to understand what data they use, like, and value, and how they use it.
What is and isn’t working today?
It’s best to start with the end in mind: What business goals are you trying to accomplish with your CRM data? Are you trying to grow into a new market or expand your footprint within existing accounts? Or aiming to gain market share? You need different types of data depending on your goals. Do you have the data you need? Is it reliable enough to make decisions based on it? Then ask yourself, is Data.com helping?
Where is it adding value, and where does it fall short? Talking with your sales and marketing teams is a great way to gain insight. How do they perceive the quality of, and gaps within, your current CRM data and how Data.com has been at augmenting it?
For example, if your teams are seeing low quality, missing, or too much unnecessary data from Data.com, it might point to areas where a Data.com alternative can offer improvements. Front line teams may have also gotten frustrated with data from Data.com and given up on using it. Understanding their expectations will help you make a better decision as you evaluate Data.com competitors.
Then it’s a good idea to examine your CRM data for yourself. Do you have quality issues? Do you trust the data? Are there too many duplicate records? Is it standardized and normalized? Will you need to clean your data before you introduce a Data.com replacement? Be prepared for the possibility of that extra step, which we’ll address in the next post.
What else would you like to do?
In addition to evaluating what’s working today and what’s not, this is a good time, as you consider Data.com competitors, to ask yourself what else you’d like to do that you can’t because of data limitations.
If you need to sharpen your targeting and improve engagement, one of the best ways to do that is to define your ideal customer profile (ICP) and then focus on those targets. Have you done that recently? Do you have reliable data with enough relevant attributes? For example, if you want to target companies of a certain size, in a specific industry or location, with contacts that have certain job titles, do you have that data and do you trust it?
Once you’ve defined your ICP, you’ll want to match it to records in your CRM system to determine how many ICP targets already exist in your database. Do you have enough? How will you get more? Have you done a total addressable market (TAM) analysis recently? There may be a huge segment of your market that’s not in your database. How do you fill that “whitespace” today?
Determining your TAM requires outside data, so any alternatives to Data.com should have the ability to help you assess your TAM, in addition to cleaning and enriching your CRM data. Is there anything else you’d like to do that you don’t have the data for today? Add that to your list of requirements as you assess Data.com competitors.
Do your sellers have the sales intelligence they need?
Whether or not you’re currently using Data.com Prospector, the retirement of Data.com gives you the opportunity to go beyond basic data and add meaningful sales intelligence to your CRM.
Start by asking sales what data and insights they would love to have that they don’t have or they struggle to find. Ask how much time they spend tracking down those data points and how much confidence they have in what they find.
Calculating how much time sales spends on research – when they should be selling – will give you a quick financial justification for including sales intelligence in your Data.com replacement solution. Plus, having more, and more relevant, data and insights at their fingertips will help them close deals in less time and avoid chasing dead-end opportunities.
Don’t Wait, Start Today
Change is always disruptive, but it gives you an opportunity to look at what’s been working, what hasn’t, and where you can improve. Taking the time now, while you still have time, will help you determine what you need and how you can choose the best alternative to Data.com.
In part 2, we’ll look at how you can start cleaning the data you have today so that you’re better prepared to migrate to a Data.com alternative in the coming months. If you can’t wait, download the full Data.com Migration Planning Guide today. Or, if you’d like to talk with a data and sales intelligence expert, let us know and we’ll be glad to help.
READ PART 2
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