It’s a simple fact that the better sales reps understand their prospects’ intentions, preferences and pain points during calls, the more business they’ll close. Each day, as your prospects interact with websites and social media platforms, their behavioral data profile is expanding. It’s now possible to gain unprecedented insight into prospects’ content preferences, product needs and budget. We hear a lot about how valuable Big Data is to sales and marketing teams. But data itself is only valuable when it’s part of a bigger story, made visible in the right context.
What Is Contextual Data?
Historically, business data was analyzed periodically (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) in order to help businesses make better revenue projections and long-term decisions. While decision data enables executives and corporate leaders to make periodic strategic and tactical adjustments, it can’t influence workflow in real time. Contextual data, on the other hand, is data that is delivered to the right person at the right time. This data is actionable and can be leveraged by employees in various roles to impact decisions in real time.
An easy-to-understand example of contextual data is Facebook Birthdays. Facebook asks users for their birthday when they sign up and stores that information in a database. Those birthdays are weaved into a story when, on a user’s birthday, all of their friends get a notification. By presenting birthday data contextually, Facebook helps remind us of our friends’ birthdays and even offers options of gifts to purchase for them.
Source: Open Source