TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE
Chris Battis: On this episode of Intent Topics, we’re going to talk about utilizing technographic data in sales outreach.
Chris Battis: I’m Chris Battis and this is Logan Kelley, and today we’ll be talking about a few things. What is technographic data, how can you use it in your own outreach, and we’ll teach you a few techniques to laser focus your personalization and sales outreach.
Chris Battis: Logan, why don’t you give us a quick overview of what technographic data is?
Logan Kelly: Yeah, man. It’s basically just what software and technology a company is using. Do you remember that campaign we released for Union, I think it was last week?
Chris Battis: Yeah, the one where we were identifying people that were using HubSpot, but also looking for leads?
Chris Battis: Yeah. That campaign was really successful wasn’t it?
Logan Kelly: Yeah, it was super successful. So, that’s really the power of technographic data. So, if you think about it, there’s three things, and we’re going to talk about all three of these things today on the show. There’s three things that technographic data can really help our sales teams with. So, the first one is can provide context to outreach. Think about that is like personalization at scale, right?
Chris Battis: Okay.
Logan Kelly: The second is we can really laser focus our offerings. Right?
Chris Battis: Sure.
Logan Kelly: So, you know, we can really build offers specifically for different segments of our target base. And then the third piece is we can conquest. Conquest like champions, right? So, you know, it’s like, what if I could know all the people who used my competitor, or, looked like they were using my competitor; based off the software they were using.
Chris Battis: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Logan Kelly: We can get the information and we can build, you know, outreach on that.
Chris Battis: So, what you’re saying with that is like instead of identifying like a person or company, you’re saying like at scale take a large group of people to then have this laser focus offering, with the context, right. Very cool.
Logan Kelly: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, think about it like this, say you’re a HubSpot user, right? This is to my first point which is provide context, right?
Chris Battis: So, let’s dig into that. Okay.
Logan Kelly: So, you’re a HubSpot user and, you know, you’ve gone through all these different trainings. You’ve consumed different eBooks, right?
Chris Battis: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Logan Kelly: And HubSpot’s done a great job of kind of creating this culture around it.
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: So, if I’m a HubSpot user I’m basically focused on using that software to build campaigns. I’m not really looking at other pieces of software to do exactly that, right? So, basically when we say provide context, I can speak to the user of that software in the language that they’re used to. And I think that’s incredibly powerful.
Chris Battis: Right.
Logan Kelly: Now here’s the other thing. All right, I don’t have to, with technographic data, I don’t have to go through… Now you and I have done this to validate the data, right? We’ve opened up the source of a page, and we look for the signals of the technology, right?
Chris Battis: Yeah. And you can identify a HubSpot website from about ten miles away.
Logan Kelly: Right. Right. And I think like HubSpot, you know, it’s a… Especially like the HubSpot CMS or the HubSpot forms, you know, it’s HS forms, and that kind of stuff, right?
Chris Battis: In the code, yeah.
Logan Kelly: Yeah. But there’s more nuance things than that, that are incredibly difficult to pick up on without technographic data or an army of coders at your beck and call. Which, you know, here at Union we’ve actually managed to do.
Chris Battis: Yeah, we’ve started doing that.
Logan Kelly: So, yeah, it’s pretty awesome.
Chris Battis: But what… Just to drill into that a little bit, might be a little bit of a… Off point, but one thing I wanted to talk about is how it felt when we pulled up this data and we’ve identified a bunch of people using HubSpot. And then we were looking at the code, and there’re various levels of usage; or various tools people were using that you could identify in the code. Whether it was just a tracking code, to tracking Linux, or a form, or then, you know, it’s very easy to identify like a fully hosted website, because it’s just HS dash, you know, all over the place.
Logan Kelly: Sure. Everything?
Chris Battis: All over the place.
Logan Kelly: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Battis: And then having migrated thousands, and thousands, and thousands of websites. When I worked at HubSpot is the HubSpot blog is one of the easiest things to identify.
Logan Kelly: Sure.
Chris Battis: And anyways there’s a bunch of ways that you can identify a HubSpot page, so I found it very interesting to validate the data. And then we were very comfortable going into the campaign, because we were like hey this is spot on. And we stopped checking after like 30 didn’t we?
Logan Kelly: Yeah.
Chris Battis: We just believed it.
Logan Kelly: Yeah. It’s easy. Yeah. And so, I think like a CMS or, you know, a like a content management system or a blog site?
Chris Battis: Yup.
Logan Kelly: They’re just super easy to see.
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: Like what about Enterprise software, right? So, what about Salesforce? What about SAP? Things that, you know, if I’m messaging into a company that uses ERP software, and I know what they’re using this particular ERP software, I already know like this is how they’re operating on a day-to-day, right? Based on that stuff. So, I’m going to make sure I message within that context. And I think that’s incredibly powerful, and you can… If you do the research once you can kind of replicate that throughout your outreach, as opposed to needing to, you know, call in or validate; or somehow get that information. So, I think that’s where… That’s this context that like it’s easy with HubSpot, but like all right I know my prospect speaks in this way, because of this more obscure software. So, now I’m going to message in like that, that’s fantastic.
Chris Battis: Yup. Yeah, that’s cool. So, even versions of softwares can change, you know, this might be getting more into the offering side of things, but like certain levels of a piece of software may have different services provided to the user. For example, some versions of a piece of software may come with support or not? So there could be opportunities for different offerings within the data, right? Once you kind of cover it.
Logan Kelly: Yeah, yeah. That’s… There’s some pretty advanced things that, for instance that we’re working on here at Union to really understand like versioning? You know? Like, I know things like Drupo for instance, you can see… You know there’s pretty good data coverage as far as like what, you know, what version somebody’s on. But some of these more sophisticated software, it’s a lot harder to see what version or, you know, particularly what modules of something that a company is using. And naturally where, you know, depending on the complexity and depending on the value, right? You know, a business can then invest into really refining that technographic data.
Logan Kelly: But I can say that for 99.9% of businesses just that basic usage data is enough, right? Especially for [Sdocs 00:07:50] right? And biz doc too.
Chris Battis: Yeah, we’ve been taking it a level deeper here, but just the data alone suggests that a ton of information to like provide context.
Logan Kelly: Right.
Chris Battis: And focus the offering.
Logan Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah. And then we can get into the offering focus. So, you know, it’s as linear as like okay, I am a Salesforce development shop, and I’m good at integrating, you know, one ERP into Salesforce, right? And, you know, so I’m going to take those two pieces of data, like are they a Salesforce user and do they use this ERP; and I can target them. Right? So that’s like a pretty straight line thing, right? Do you use this, do you use this, I’m going to message you because I know these two things. But the more… I think one of the… Was I clear on that one? Just so we’re… So, I can move on?
Chris Battis: Yup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.
Logan Kelly: So, the less clear path is like, “All right, how does an organization think?” Right? Do they use ERP software or are they not that advanced? Right? Does… Do they have a marketing automation tool and not a sales engagement tool? Do they not have marketing automation tools? You know? So, we can start to judge, and build our profile, and our fit, you know, our fit? Sort of profile, or ideal customer profile.
Chris Battis: Yup.
Logan Kelly: Based on the technology that somebody is using, and then create offerings around that. So, what I mean by an offering is anywhere from a special, you know? So, we’ll do this and, you know, we’ll discount it for users of these particular products.
Chris Battis: Yup.
Logan Kelly: As well as like, this can kind of influence go to market strategy, right?
Chris Battis: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Logan Kelly: So, I think a lot of… There’s a lot of people who have come up with these great offerings, that have no idea how to get the offering into the hands of the people that they should be. And so, I think you know who they are, but you got to knock on a lot of doors to find the users of these particular things. And that’s really where, you know, we can say, “Here’s this piece of software that I’ve written.” Or this, you know, service I provide based on this particular software, I’m going to hit that.
Chris Battis: Yeah. Fish where the fish are.
Logan Kelly: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and then the third is like the conquest piece. And I love this stuff. So, I… With intent data we’ve… Here at Union, you know, we’ve been able to see like when a company is… Like in a switching mood, or there’s some discomfort, or there’s like they have this piece of software but they’re looking… You know, they’re surging for things that that piece of software does, right?
Chris Battis: For example… Yeah, so for example, like with HubSpot where are you? Here’s the users using HubSpot, we can say that’s the technology they’re on, why would they be looking for marketing automation, or X, Y, Z thing that HubSpot does for free or cheap, right?
Logan Kelly: Exactly.
Chris Battis: So, something’s up there.
Logan Kelly: Exactly. And so, you know, for… When you see that, right? I’m going to go conquest that all day long. I think that’s super powerful to be able to say, “I know that you’re my competitors customer, but…” And I’m not going to tell that to the prospect, but like here’s some value that we provide. Here’s some content that we… That shows that we are experts, right? And that we can solve that problem. And that is like it’s been incredibly powerful for us and incredibly powerful as well for our clients.
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: We have some campaigns right now that are absolutely crushing it, in multiple, multiple industries and verticals.
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: You know, so yeah.
Chris Battis: Yeah, think of it this way too. Not only could it be used for sales, and we’ve started down this path, but imagine you’re an agency, or just an account manager at a certain software, and you’re looking for these signals to try to reduce turn? Or maximize retention? And it’s kind of like the opposite, maybe it’s buying signals, right? But I’d call it like leaving your turning signals of people surging on these topics of these companies if they’re already paying. And I know that some companies have put a lot of money into trying to predict and stay ahead of these retention issues, and it would seem to me like this data would be really useful to help with that; and identify when somebody is potentially looking at things that don’t show signs of success. Or maybe could influence renewal, you know, that’s just kind of another use of the data.
Logan Kelly: Absolutely. And I completely agree with you, especially… Like there are these very expensive software products, you know, anywhere from… There’s a lot of them, right? ERP, SAM, marketing automation, just huge commitments that are being sort of like outclassed by lower cost products, you know? Squarespace, crushing it.
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: I’m not sure there’s, you know, I put a Squarespace set up to a lot of different websites and I just like Squarespace a lot of the times more. And I think that’s really where, you know, what you’re talking about comes into play, because these bigger companies are on defense. Like hard core defense for the rest of their existence.
Chris Battis: We’ve recently just rebuilt our site and I’m like a hardcore HubSpot COS guy, and I built it on Squarespace.
Logan Kelly: Yeah, and it looks beautiful. It looks beautiful.
Chris Battis: And I’m really happy with it, and so yeah, I got to log into another place, but the ability to manage the pages and the templates; is just I could just move faster.
Logan Kelly: Right.
Chris Battis: But, you know, I don’t know as I would have shown up as well I don’t think our company’s really showing up on many radars because we’re pretty small, but I would have been… I did a lot of research, right? We made a decision what are we going to build on.
Logan Kelly: Right.
Chris Battis: And I did a bunch of research for about a week, and so it could have been shown.
Logan Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. And so, if you think about that, if I’m a partner, a HubSpot partner, like why didn’t… Why wasn’t that tracked? Right? Why didn’t someone reach out to you, knowing that you were looking at other platforms?
Chris Battis: Knowing that we were a partner?
Logan Kelly: Well, no. Like so, Union Resolute is looking at other platforms. You are actively researching, and not a single other HubSpot partner, right? Now, they might not have known, or they might have known, so it might be irrelevant.
Chris Battis: Right.
Logan Kelly: But, like we didn’t get our reach strength. I think that’s where the opportunity is for partners of these big software companies, to use intent data and to look at the sort of pseudo conquest, right? Like either another partner is screwing up and, you know, the user of this software is not happy, and is looking to solve a problem; or they’re looking to switch. Right? And that’s where the opportunity is for agencies to crush it. Whether you’re a development agency, you know, an outsource sales agency. There’re tons of different places that, you know, you can use this technographic data, layer some intent into it, and have a pretty good starting place for your account… You know, your target account sort of piece, right? And then layer context into it and you’re off to the races.
Chris Battis: Yeah. So, there’s a pro tip for any partners listening in on the ways you can identify potential good fit clients.
Logan Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. The other pro tip is go ahead and give us a call.
Chris Battis: Yeah. But we might build it on Squarespace or something else.
Logan Kelly: Right. Right.
Chris Battis: Awesome. Cool Logan. Well is there anything you want to go into before we wrap up here on technographic data?
Logan Kelly: No, I think it’s a complex name for a simple idea, right? It’s just the software somebody’s using and I think it’s a good starting place to build context and personalization at scale, and really impact the go-to-market; and conquest strategy of a whole variety of businesses. Yeah, so cool stuff.
Chris Battis: And we use it every day. Yeah. All right folks. This wraps up today’s episode of Intent Topics, I’m Chris Battis.
Logan Kelly: And I am Logan Kelly, thank you so much for listening. Have a great day everybody and please don’t forget to give us a five star rating on whatever podcast that you use.
Chris Battis: All right. Thanks.
