One of the biggest challenges for B2B sales teams that target SMBs is getting good data about those companies. Traditional data enrichment just doesn't provide the level or detail or accuracy for SMBs.
Because of this, companies that sell to small and medium businesses have to take a whole different approach to data collection. So let's talk more about data enrichment that actually works when selling to SMBs.
Selling to SMBs
Regardless of what kind of SMBs you sell to, all B2B sales teams that target SMBs have a few things in common.
1. High deal volume. You manage a lot of prospects, which means you need to be able to quickly prioritize the highest potential accounts for sales and marketing. You need to be able to disqualify the SMBs that aren’t a good fit so you don’t waste time working accounts you can’t sell to
2. Long tail ICP. Knowing what makes a good customer comes down to details. You’re not being well served by traditional data enrichment providers that just don’t get granular enough for your ICP. You need more detailed company size data, more specific industry classification, more recent location data.
3. More prospects than sales reps. Each one of your sales reps is going to be working a big book of accounts. They physically don't have time to spend manually researching every single account. You need accurate account data ready to go so reps don't waste time.
4. Outdated info. SMBs are constantly changing. They open new locations, close their business, update their contact information, bring in new partners. It's hard to know if you have the latest data on an SMB without going directly to the source.
You may be selling to small or medium sized businesses, but you’re not selling to every single SMB. There’s a lot of variation in companies with between 1 and 100 employees. For example:
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You sell to home improvement professionals, but you’ve found that companies that have at least 5 employees are a better fit for your product.
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You sell to accounting firms, but only the ones that provide tax accounting services.
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You sell to legal professionals, but you do best with legal firms that have 3+ partners.
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You sell to healthcare service providers, but you can only serve them if they use a specific EHR system.
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You sell to food and beverage businesses, but only if they have 2 or more locations.
Your SMB ICP
Knowing what makes a good SMB customer probably includes data from a few different firomographic categories: company size, its location(s), industry and one other thing that makes them perfect for your product.
You need data enrichment that provides detailed, current information about your prospects. That won’t come from big traditional databases that tend to categorize company firmographic data into high-level categories.
For example, Zoominfo clusters all very small businesses into the category of 1-10 employees. There's a big different between a 1-person company and a 10-person company, and you can't waste time selling to the ones that are too small for your solution.
The same goes for most data enrichment industry categories. Companies like Zoominfo classify every company into a high-level industry category, like landscape services or consumer services. But that only tells you so much about a company. You need more detailed information about a company's industry. What kind of landscape services? Do they serve residential or commercial customers?
(If you're interested in this, there's more on industry classification here)
That kind of specific and specialized data can only come from the businesses themselves. And you don't have the time or the team to manually research them all.
So how do you collect that information at scale? You’ve got thousands of potential customers, and not enough sales reps to call them all.
AI for SMB data enrichment
That's where AI comes in. AI gives us the ability to research and synthesize information on a huge scale without adding headcount. AI can interpret and infer things from a company's website much like a human would, saving you lots of time on manual research. That includes using AI agents that can:
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Research companies to qualify or disqualify them
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Determine a company's size
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Classify services offered
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List a company's locations, properties, employees, partners
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Identify potential use cases
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Identify lookalikes to find more like the ones you already have
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Cluster similar companies together so you can run efficient campaigns with highly relevant messaging
There are a few ways you can get AI to do this. You can roll your own solution using any of the AI services.
Or you can use software that's already put it all together, like we have at Gradient Works. Our new Account Research capabilities uses AI to research companies, find new lookalike accounts if you need more prospects, and group similar accounts together for efficient outreach. It's perfect for B2B sales teams that sell to SMBs! We'd love to show you, and will give you 5,000 free credits to try it out on your SMB data. Book a demo here.
