This Aberdeen research brief explores how the performance of the most successful sales organizations--and a subset of D&B users--map to best practices of sales effectiveness that yield better knowledge of the customer.
Sales Intelligence 2013: Best Practices Adopted by D&B Customers
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May, 2013
Sales Intelligence 2013: Best-in-Class Practices
Adopted by D&B Customers
"Know thy Customer" is a universally acknowledged best practice in the
business-to-business (B2B) space, yet many enterprises and small companies
alike fail to consistently maintain an accurate database of, and strategic insight
into, the prospects and customers they need to satisfy in order to survive.
Aberdeen research conducted among 215 organizations for Sales Intelligence:
What B2B Sellers Need To Know Before the Call (June 2012) included 55 survey
respondents who indicated that they used Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) products
— D&B 360 or Hoover’s — as key components of their sales intelligence
deployments, typically integrated into their Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) platform. This Research Brief will explore how the
performance of the most successful sales organizations, and of this subset of
D&B users, map to best practices in sales effectiveness that yield better
knowledge of the customer.
The Sales Intelligence research process included determining what top-
performing companies adopted, in terms of sales technologies and processes,
which were less frequently deployed by under-performers. The definition of
these high-achieving organizations was determined through Aberdeen’s
traditional Best-in-Class process, which for this study used customer
retention rates and year-over-year changes in team / individual quota
attainment and average deal size as the most valuable yardsticks in evaluating
the results of sales teams. In the same spirit, we see in Table 1 that D&B
product users out-perform all other companies around a number of real-time
sales metrics.
Table 1: D&B Customers Out-Perform All Others in Multiple Sales
Effectiveness Metrics
Sales Effectiveness
Metric
D&B / Hoover’s
Customers
All
Others
Customer retention rate 63% 60%
Average sales cycle 3.9 months 4.6 months
Average time sales reps spend per
day searching for relevant company,
contact, or industry information
0.78 hours 0.89 hours
Average sales deal or contract value
size
$316,050 $239,720
Source: Aberdeen Group, May 2012
Research Brief
Aberdeen’s Research Briefs
provide a detailed exploration of
key findings from a primary
research study, including key
performance indicators, Best-in-
Class insight, and vendor insight.