Discover the Best Sales Intelligence Software for Commercial Services in 2024

Introduction

“Best” is a subjective term. For instance, a rancher who prefers a Ford F450 Dually to haul a horse trailer has very different needs compared to a local locksmith who finds the fuel-efficient Ford Maverick perfect for carrying tools and parking on city streets.

What’s “best” for one person (or team) isn’t always an excellent fit for another.

Similarly, the best sales intelligence tools and platforms for software as a service (SaaS) companies or global enterprises might not fit local sales teams.

In this article, we’ll explore the best sales intelligence software of 2024 for commercial services sales teams. We’ll start with the basics of the best sales intelligence software in 2024, covering its definition, benefits, and importance in today’s sales landscape. Then, we’ll turn our attention to the top platforms in the marketplace, giving an overview of their features as well as some pros and cons of each.

So if you’re a sales manager, sales rep, or owner of a commercial roofing, elevator, solar, HVAC, janitorial and cleaning, or any other industry that sells into properties, and you’re looking for the best intelligence for sales solutions, you’re in the right place!

What is Sales Intelligence?

So that we’re on the same page, “sales intelligence” is the process of collecting, analyzing, and leveraging data to help sales representatives and marketing teams better understand their prospects and close more deals.

Within the sales intelligence tool itself, there are several subcategories of tools: sales coaching tools, lead databases, property intelligence solutions, and data enrichment platforms are the most common.

Sales coaching platforms such as Gong record interactions between representatives and potential customers. This helps individuals enhance their skills and foster growth, but this is not the topic we’ll focus on in this article.

Today, we will discuss sales intelligence platforms that help your team streamline sales, generate leads, and accelerate revenue growth.

In this context, sales intelligence software tracks vital metrics that equip sales professionals with actionable insights to identify, target, and convert qualified accounts in minutes.

Why is Sales Intelligence Important?

Without accurate data and insights into your prospects’ behavior and needs, it’s hard to make informed decisions on how best to approach them with your product or service.

Sales intelligence platforms like Convex track two primary types of data: buyer intent data and sales intelligence data to provide clarity on who you’re selling to, what they may need, and their level of interest in your services.

Types of Data: Intent Data and Sales Intelligence Data

When it comes to sales intelligence platforms, two primary types of data are critical to understanding your customer: intent data and sales intelligence data.

1. Intent Data: 

This data provides valuable insights into the potential customers’ behavior and signals their interest in specific products or services. Intent data is often derived from online activities, such as website visits, content downloads, and social media interactions.

Analyzing these buying behaviors (aka “signals”) can help sales teams identify prospects who are actively researching and considering solutions like yours, allowing for more targeted and timely sales outreach now.

2. Sales Intelligence Data:

This encompasses a broader range of information about prospects and sales triggers, including:

• Property intelligence data: such as ownership and tenant information, permit data, and equipment onsite.
• “Firmographic” details, such as company size, industry, and revenue.
• “Technographic” data: the technologies they are currently using.
• And Contact information for key decision-makers.

This data helps sales teams build comprehensive profiles of their target accounts. Together, intent data, account intelligence, and sales intelligence data provide a powerful foundation for understanding your prospects’ needs and crafting tailored sales approaches that convert more effectively.

Who is Sales Intelligence Software for?

Sales intelligence software is designed for a wide range of professionals, primarily benefiting sales and marketing teams, as well as business owners and entrepreneurs. Here’s how sales intelligence tools work for each member of your team:

Sales and Marketing Teams

• Sales Teams: Sales professionals can use sales intelligence software to find high-quality leads, personalize outreach, and close more deals. These tools offer comprehensive data on potential customers, helping teams focus on promising prospects and tailor pitches for better conversion rates.
• Marketing Teams: Marketing professionals can leverage sales intelligence tools to create targeted campaigns that align with their ideal audience’s behaviors and preferences. This leads to larger prospect lists, higher-quality interactions, and improved campaign performance.

Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

• Business Owners: Sales intelligence gives business owners a competitive edge with insights into market trends, customer behavior, and competitors. This helps in making informed decisions, optimizing sales processes, and driving revenue growth. Understanding customer needs leads to better products, increased satisfaction, and loyalty.
• Entrepreneurs: Sales intelligence is a key data provider for entrepreneurs aiming to scale their businesses. It uncovers market opportunities, analyzes competition, and supports data-driven strategies for market capture. Utilizing top sales intelligence tools helps refine go-to-market approaches, attract investors, and ensure sustainable growth.

Benefits of using sales intelligence platforms

Before we get into the tools themselves, let’s talk about the benefits of implementing sales intelligence platforms on efficiency and pipeline.

Accelerated Revenue Growth

Sales intelligence platforms boost revenue by identifying high-value accounts and offering actionable insights. 

They analyze data to find potential opportunities, helping sales teams focus on the most convertible prospects, thereby enhancing profitability.

Improved Sales Efficiency and Productivity

Sales intelligence tools automate many of the repetitive and time-consuming tasks associated with the sales process. 

According to Salesforce, the average sales rep spends almost 21% of their time doing lead research – that’s the equivalent of 2 hours per day.

Sales intelligence solutions like Convex can perform the same lead research process in 3- 5 minutes. This increased efficiency leads to higher productivity and more closed deals.

Enhanced Customer Insights

Sales intelligence platforms offer deep insights into target companies and prospects, analyzing data on structure, decision-makers, activities, and market trends. This allows sales teams to engage prospects personally, addressing specific needs and enhancing the overall customer experience.

What’s more, using intent data and sales intelligence data, Convex can make recommendations on the “warmth” of your prospect, ranking them 1- 5 (1 being cold and unlikely to respond, 5 being very likely) and how likely they are to buy. This leads to visibility across the sales process and (our next point), better decision-making.

Better Decision-Making

Access to real-time data and advanced predictive analytics also empower sales leaders to make more informed decisions about their sales strategies and allocate resources appropriately.

Sales intelligence platforms provide insights into trends, activities, and customer behaviors, allowing leaders to adjust their strategies accordingly. This data-driven approach leads to better forecasting, more accurate resource allocation, and improved overall sales performance.

Streamlined Sales Cycles

Integrating sales intelligence tools with your existing customer relationship management (CRM) system and other sales engagement tools helps create a seamless, end-to-end sales process. This integration ensures that all your sales data is centralized and easily accessible, reducing data silos and improving communication across your sales team. By streamlining the sales cycle, your team can move prospects through the sales pipeline much more quickly and efficiently, leading to faster deal closures.

Key Features of Effective Sales Intelligence Platforms: Finding the Right Platform for Your Team

When evaluating the best sales intelligence tools and software, especially for local sales teams in the commercial and industrial services business, look for solutions that offer:

1. Data Enrichment and Accuracy
   For sales teams targeting property managers and building managers, the quality and accuracy of data are paramount. The right platform should provide comprehensive, up-to-date information on target companies and contacts.Accurate data ensures that sales reps have a clear and precise understanding of their prospects, enabling more effective and targeted outreach.

2. Intent Data and Buyer Behavior Insight
   Advanced sales intelligence solutions use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to analyze data and detect buyer intent signals from prospect behaviors.This helps sales teams tailor outreach strategies to match prospect needs, increasing conversion chances.

3. Automated Workflows and Sales Engagement
   Efficiency in sales is key, and automated workflows help streamline processes. Look for features like Generative AI outreach, sales follow-up features, and other automated workflows that streamline sales and ensure nothing is forgotten.Additionally, integrating sales intelligence tools with mapping software like Convex can optimize routes and scheduling.

4. Integration with CRM and Sales Automation Tools
   A powerful sales intelligence platform should seamlessly integrate with your existing customer relationship management (CRM) and sales automation tools. This integration creates a unified sales workflow, allowing smooth data transfer and synchronization between systems. It eliminates data silos, reduces manual data entry, and ensures that all relevant information is accessible in one place, enhancing overall sales productivity and efficiency.For commercial services teams, this means having all property-related data, customer interactions, and prospect information in a single, easily accessible system.

5. Real-time Analytics and Reporting
   Robust reporting and analytics capabilities are key factors for tracking performance, identifying trends, and optimizing your sales strategy over time.Effective sales intelligence platforms offer real-time analytics that provides insights into key metrics such as engagement rates, conversion rates, pipeline status, and revenue growth. These insights enable sales leaders to make informed decisions, adjust strategies as needed, and continuously improve their sales processes.For commercial and industrial services sales teams, real-time analytics help monitor geographic sales territories, and sales development representatives track the effectiveness of route planning and ensure timely follow-ups.Prioritizing these key features that will drive results for your team can help you select a top sales intelligence solution and platform that not only meets your immediate needs but also scales with your business, providing long-term value and driving sustained sales success.

Top Sales Intelligence Software in 2024

Now, let’s dive into the platforms themselves:

1. Convex

Target Market: B2B, commercial, and industrial sales teams working directly with property managers.

Value Proposition: Convex provides detailed property intelligence data, including property characteristics, permitting history, ownership details, and commercial tenant data. This information is “mission-critical” for tailoring sales strategies in property-related industries.

Best Use Cases:

• Property-Related Prospecting and Outreach: Ideal for companies targeting specific types of properties or property owners, such as those looking for energy efficiency solutions like solar installations.
• Maintenance and Upgrades: Perfect for service providers in commercial services like HVAC, elevators, generators, solar, and roofing.
• Expansion Planning: Useful for commercial services looking to expand their market by targeting properties that are newly developed, under new ownership, or have recently changed management.

2. Cognism

Target Market: B2B sales teams in need of rapid, scalable lead generation.

Value Proposition: Offers comprehensive, GDPR-compliant contact data across various regions, enhancing global outreach.

Best Use Cases: Effective for companies looking to expand their b2b sales intelligence efforts internationally in a legally defensible, GDPR-compliant way.

Key Features:

• High-quality B2B data with phone-verified contacts.
• AI-driven intent data to identify in-market prospects.
• Easy integration with popular CRM and sales engagement tools.

Pros:

• Comprehensive global database.
• GDPR and CCPA-compliant data.
• Fast and friendly customer support.

Cons:

• Higher pricing compared to some competitors.
• Requires data integration effort.

3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Target Market: Sales professionals across all industries aiming to get new leads and leverage professional networking.

Value Proposition: Provides advanced search capabilities within the world’s largest professional network, facilitating targeted outreach.

Best Use Cases: Ideal for personalizing outreach and tracking key changes in prospect profiles, such as job movements.

Key Features:

• Leverages LinkedIn’s professional network data.
• Advanced lead and account search.
• CRM integration and workflow tools.

Pros:

• Trusted, up-to-date data source.
• Enables social selling strategies.
• Provides insights for relationship-building.

Cons:

• Limited data enrichment capabilities.
• Premium pricing models can be costly.
• Filtering prospects is complex, and contact data can be inaccurate.

4. HubSpot Sales Hub

Target Market: SMBs and enterprises looking for a comprehensive sales platform.

Value Proposition: Delivers a comprehensive suite of tools that cater to every aspect of the sales process—from prospecting and lead generation to sales automation.

Best Use Cases: Seamless integration with other HubSpot tools, providing a cohesive environment that enhances data visibility and coordination across sales and marketing teams.

Key Features:

• A comprehensive sales platform that provides tools for prospecting, lead generation, and sales automation.
• Offers integration with existing HubSpot tools.

Pros:

• User-friendly interface.
• Excellent CRM integration.
• Robust analytics and reporting tools.

Cons:

• It can be expensive for smaller teams.
• Some features may require additional HubSpot subscriptions.

5. Clearbit

Target Market: Marketing and sales teams in B2B companies focused on personalized marketing.

Value Proposition: Offers real-time predictive analytics and data enrichment services, providing deep insights into prospects and enabling personalization at scale.

Best Use Cases: Best utilized for personalizing websites and emails based on visitor data to increase conversion rates.

Key Features:

• Real-time data enrichment.
• AI-powered B2B data solutions.
• Integrates deeply with CRM systems.

Pros:

• High data accuracy and quality.
• Real-time updates and enrichment.
• Supports personalized marketing and sales efforts.

Cons:

• May require technical expertise for setup.
• Pricing can be high for smaller businesses.

As you can see, we’re not here to bash anyone. This is a list of the top 5 sales intelligence platforms with target market data, value propositions, and best use-case data from their own company websites, users, and reviewers. The goal of this list is to provide you with the resources so you can make the choice for yourself.

These platforms each bring their own unique strengths and weaknesses, and choosing the right one for your team depends on your specific needs and goals.

Once you’ve chosen the best option for you, here’s how to get the most out of it.

Best Practices for Maximizing the Impact of Sales Intelligence Data

1. Align Your Sales Intelligence Strategy with Overall Business Goals and KPIs.

Clear communication, team alignment, and actively tracked metrics will keep everyone on the same page and headed in the right direction.

• Define Clear Objectives: Start by outlining how sales intelligence will help achieve your business goals. Whether it’s increasing revenue, improving customer satisfaction, or expanding into new markets, ensure that your sales intelligence strategy is tailored to these objectives.
• Set Measurable KPIs: Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your business goals. This could include metrics like lead conversion rates, sales cycle length, customer acquisition costs, and overall revenue growth.
• Regular Reviews: Conduct regular reviews to ensure your sales intelligence efforts are contributing to these KPIs. Adjust your strategies as needed to stay on track with your business goals.

2. Ensure Data Quality

“Best-in-class” data requires hygiene, security, verification, and regular audits to stay that way.

• Data Hygiene Practices: Implement strict data hygiene practices to regularly clean and update your database. Remove duplicates, correct inaccuracies, and fill in missing information to maintain data integrity.
• Source Verification: Ensure that your data sources are reliable and continually verified for accuracy. Use tools that offer real-time data updates and cross-reference information from multiple sources to enhance reliability.
• Regular Audits: Schedule regular data audits to review the accuracy and relevance of your database. This helps in identifying any gaps or outdated information that could hinder your sales efforts.

3. Integrate Sales Intelligence with Existing Workflows and Tools

Streamlining is about integration so data can flow from one platform to the next and eliminate manual tasks.

• Seamless Integration: Choose a sales intelligence platform that integrates seamlessly with your existing CRM, marketing automation, and other sales tools. This ensures a unified workflow and reduces the chances of data silos.
• Workflow Optimization: Leverage the integration to streamline your sales processes. For instance, automate data entry, lead scoring, and follow-up reminders to enhance efficiency and reduce manual work.
• Unified Dashboard: Use a unified dashboard to centralize all sales intelligence data. This provides a holistic view of your sales operations and helps in making informed decisions quickly.

4. Provide Comprehensive Training

You’ll face some pushback as you try and implement new tools – this is normal. People (especially sales reps) don’t like change. Show them how these tools will save time and increase results – that way they’re motivated to make the change.

• Tailored Training Programs: Develop training programs tailored to different roles within your sales team to ensure each member understands how to use the sales intelligence platform you choose effectively. With Convex, you don’t have to do this alone. Our team conducts regular comprehensive training for all users, ensuring high adoption rates within the sales team. This tailored training program is a significant benefit of using Convex, fostering better utilization and efficiency.
• Continuous Learning: Encourage continuous learning by providing access to advanced training modules, webinars, and workshops. This keeps your team updated on new features and best practices.
• Support Resources: Make sure that your team has access to support resources such as user manuals, FAQs, and help desks. This aids in the quick resolution of any issues and ensures smooth operation.

5. Continuously Monitor Performance

Management Consultant and Author Peter Drucker used to say, “What gets measured, gets managed…” Continuously monitoring performance is about taking a realistic look at results and making changes accordingly.

• Real-Time Analytics: Utilize real-time analytics to monitor key performance metrics. This helps track the effectiveness of your sales strategies and make data-driven decisions.
• Performance Dashboards: Create performance dashboards to visualize your sales data. These dashboards can provide insights into sales trends, pipeline status, and individual rep performance.
• Feedback Loops: Establish feedback loops where sales reps can share their experiences and insights on the platform’s effectiveness. Use this feedback to refine your strategies and make continuous improvements.

Conclusion

The reality of today’s hyper-competitive sales environment is that sales intelligence tools are a must. Revenue teams aimed at accelerating pipeline and achieving rapid growth need more actionable data insights to drive conversions and deliver measurable results.

The sales intelligence tools and platforms we’ve talked about in this article empower sales reps to focus on what truly matters: building relationships and closing deals.

So, as you’re making your choice, research and compare top options like Convex, Cognism, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, HubSpot Sales Hub, and Dealfront.

Pay close attention to factors such as data accuracy, integration capabilities, and scalability. By choosing a solution that aligns with your overall sales strategy, you can set your sales and marketing teams up for success and stay ahead in an increasingly competitive market.

The right sales intelligence tools and platform can transform your sales approach, streamline your operations, and ultimately boost your bottom line. Now is the time to embrace these technologies and ensure your team has the competitive edge needed to thrive.

Ready to transform your sales strategy with cutting-edge property intelligence technology? Schedule a demo of Convex today to equip your team with the tools they need to succeed today!