Step 4: Connect

  • Updated

Once you've identified a prospect with a buying trigger and used your research to create a compelling pitch, it's time to make contact. Unfortunately, it can be challenging to get a prospective buyer's attention in today's competitive market.

What are Demandbase One for Sales Connections?

One of the most powerful features of Demandbase One for Sales (formerly Sales Intelligence) is the ability to consolidate your professional network into a single location. Demandbase One for Sales lets you combine contacts from LinkedIn, Gmail, Outlook, and other sources. You can also add to this information by entering your education, past employers, reference customers, and contacts that you indicate are connections within Demandbase One for Sales.

Demandbase One for Sales works to verify a company's employees so you can find relevant people and their department and role at a company.

Tip: If you find outdated contact information or a person that has changed companies, click Wrong Info? at the top of the page to inform us. This notifies our content team about the outdated information. We'll let you know within 48 hours if we can verify the correction.

Your Expanded Network

By providing more connection information, you increase your chances of finding connections at a target account. In addition to your direct connections, Demandbase One for Sales also connects you to those of your colleagues that have provided their connection information.

Connections - New Brand.png

Your Private Network

When you add your contacts to Demandbase One for Sales, nothing gets added to the Demandbase One for Sales database unless you explicitly request it. Demandbase One for Sales was designed with privacy in mind. This means you can add your contacts without worrying about subjecting them to additional sales calls.

Tip: Adding your connections to the Demandbase One for Sales database allows you to add them to watchlists, keep up with their social media updates, and view their work history.

How It Works

The process for managing connections works as follows:

  • You provide your contacts from LinkedIn, Gmail, or Outlook.
  • Demandbase One for Sales matches your contacts against people in its database. If the contact exists, Demandbase One for Sales creates a link for you to review the information.
  • Demandbase One for Sales doesn't add contacts that don't exist in its database since it would be a violation of your privacy rights. These contacts become your private network and you can manually add them to the Demandbase One for Sales database.
    Important:
    Even though your colleagues can see connections in your private network, they cannot see their contact information. They need to ask you for a referral if they want to reach out to someone in your private network.

How to Set Up Connections

The process to set up connections in Demandbase One for Sales includes three main steps.

1. Import your contacts from LinkedIn, Gmail, or Outlook.

If you use LinkedIn, the recommendation is to start with it since it typically represents the biggest source of connections.

Demandbase One for Sales shows the number of contacts imported for each source, for example, 354 of 489. The first number represents the number of contacts imported that already existed in the Demandbase One for Sales database. The second represents the number of contacts that it attempted to import. The difference between the two numbers represent the number of contacts in your private network that were not imported.

When you import contacts from Outlook, Demandbase One for Sales only imports your personal contacts. It doesn't import entries from corporate address books. To import employees from corporate address books, you need to add them as personal contacts.

2. Add your personal employment and education information.

Entering your work history in Demandbase One for Sales allows it to find connections where you or a colleague worked at the same company as a prospect. This type of connection can be one of the most useful when you want to reach out to a prospective buyer. It is recommended that you enter your work history even if you can't remember the employment dates so that Demandbase One for Sales can identify these connections.

3. Add your personal reference customers.

After your Demandbase One for Sales Admin adds your company reference customers, you can add any personal reference customers that are not part of the company list.

How to Use Connections

Demandbase One for Sales provides two ways to help you successfully engage a prospective buyer.

Find a Warm Introduction

Personal introductions can be the best way to engage a prospective buyer and Demandbase One for Sales makes it easy to ask a connection to make an introduction. To ask for an introduction, search for people you have connections with and ask your mutual contact for a referral.

View Full Profile

If you can't find a connection to make an introduction, you can view the full profile for a prospective buyer. The page shows the person's firmographics information, latest blog posts, social media feeds and other information to help you start business conversations.

Was this article helpful?

0 out of 0 found this helpful