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It’s no secret that warm introductions can help fast-track closing more deals. Acting as a kind of endorsement, warm introductions get salespeople in the door much quicker, encouraging their prospects to take a call or hear the pitch. Having a warm introduction removes the awkwardness or potential mistrust during that first point of contact and gives sales professionals even more of an opportunity to make a stellar first impression using all of the information at their disposal. If tapping warm introductions isn’t already a part of your acquisition strategy—you should really get on that.
What exactly is a warm introduction?
A warm introduction is when a mutual third party introduces the salesperson to the potential buyer. This adds value and authenticity (and usually more interest) for the prospect. Part of what makes warm introductions so great is that they don’t have a very high customer acquisition cost (CAC), which is an important metric when analyzing worthwhile sales strategies.
What is customer acquisition cost (CAC)?
According to Hubspot, “a company’s CAC is the total sales and marketing cost required to earn a new customer over a specific time period”. These costs include things like commissions, bonuses, salaries, marketing and media campaigns, plus overhead—so you could see how winning some customers can get a little pricey.
The future (and past) of warm introductions
While warm introductions have likely been around as long as sales itself, it was about 25 years ago when the first customer relationship management (CRM) tools were born—and people started to take notice that technology could help track prospects and make helpful referrals and introductions. But by the time CRM use went mainstream, trying to use its data to make sales calls was rife with problems. The data couldn’t be trusted, no one wanted to input or update contacts—you might as well have started using a Rolodex again.
It all starts with a solid foundation of client data
Fast forward to 2023, when many, many companies are still experiencing major problems using their CRM data. Mostly because it’s incredibly dirty. Due to those same problems—asking people to spend an ungodly amount of hours per week entering data, human error, changes in roles, etc—CRM is still struggling to maintain its value for a lot of organizations.
Luckily there have been tools developed to combat these struggles and make CRM just plain work better. Driven by proven strategies like warm introductions, there are platforms called customer intelligence tools that use artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and machine learning to improve and leverage CRM data.
By cleaning up dirty CRM data through automation, these kinds of tools are creating that solid foundation of accurate, trust-worthy data, opening the door to relationship mapping on a whole other level—making warm introductions as accessible and powerful as ever.
What do we mean by relationship mapping?
Once you’ve automated away cleaning up and maintaining your own CRM data (saving everyone loads of time) by letting a customer intelligence platform do it, you’ll be able to use that accurate data to find connections you didn’t know existed in the company.
It works by tapping into your business communication platforms—email, VOIP, calendar—to identify leads within employee networks. It’s essentially an automated customer intelligence platform that works with your CRM to highlight relationship insights.
Once you can clearly see (or, map) the connections between employees and potential clients, current clients and potential clients, etc—warm introductions galore!
Why is relationship mapping important?
A recent article on warm introductions in Forbes states that: “Successful individuals understand that a robust, far-reaching network is critical to their continued success. The more diverse your network, the better your odds will be of finding a shared connection willing to make a warm introduction.”
Effective relationship mapping will increase your number of warm introductions. And sales conversations launched by warm introductions just work better—in fact, they can help close deals much faster.
How Introhive can help shorten the sales cycle
Using customer relationship platforms like Introhive to map relationships across your organization gives salespeople more time to work on more deals. The less time they spend on an opportunity, the more deals you can push through the pipeline.
On top of all that, B2B buyers are 5X more likely to engage with a salesperson via a warm introduction versus a cold call. With Introhive, every relationship is scored, so you can see who among your colleagues and contacts has the best chance of providing you with the warmest lead.
Conclusion
Our partners have seen the benefits of adopting customer intelligence—making sense of their CRM database, providing useful relationship mapping, and producing more warm introductions for their sales team. Listen to their stories here.
About Introhive
Introhive is a relationship intelligence platform that transforms your messy data into real insights and opportunities, delivered directly to your revenue teams when and where they need them. Introhive seamlessly enables organizations to use their greatest asset (relationships) to drive revenue and adapt for the future.
Learn more about how Introhive can help your business grow revenue, relationships and retention.
