There are so many external factors that can influence sales success – the vast number of which an individual rep may not be aware of. Software changes within an organization. Patent awards. New leases. All publicly available information. But how do you find this information? 

Currently it’s a manual process of extracting data from a variety of sources. But ZoomInfo plans to change all that with its new product Workflows. Workflows intends to arm reps with information they may not even know existed and  it could have a big impact on their success. We spoke recently with ZoomInfo CEO Henry Schuck about the launch and his vision for how it will impact marketers and reps alike. 

Henry, congratulations on the launch. Can you tell us a bit about Workflows and how it came to be? 

HS: Our goal with Workflows is to bring all external data affecting an account together so our customers can create automated campaigns. Until now this was all based on internal data – the signals we used were all internal until now. Workflows harnesses all that Data. 

B2BNN: Intent is the big focus – how is Workflows different than say Bombora? 

HS: Bombora deals with a particular slice of data – what people are actively looking for. With Workflows dealing with 100 million data-points, we are looking at the totality of external data that indicates movement in a company. Let’s say a business goes from Quickbooks to NetSuite. That’s a pretty interesting and potentially indicative piece of data about the evolution of that company. Combine that with other inputs and you have a dataset a lot can be inferred from and acted upon. 

B2BNN: Is there a weighting or logic to the data? How is it presented? 

HS: Its automated notifications and we are still working on the logic, but connects directly into SFDC so action can be taken right from within the account. 

B2bNN: Is the data automation combined with any functional automation? 

HS: Yes, currently mainly notifications and communications, with more planned. 

B2BNN: Recent research shows marketers are increasingly finding automation overwhelming and on the verge of annoying. How do you deliver the information in a way that is actionable for the rep but not onerous? 

HS: We’re not concerned about fatigue. My mobile number is publicly available in the database and I get get maybe 3 calls a day. It used to be very complex to access this information but now that it’s not, behaviour is changing. 

B2BNN: Why Workflows now? 

HS: The ability to store large amounts of small data has changed dramatically in the past few years and become so much more affordable – processing is so much cheaper now that this type of intelligence becomes possible. 

B2BNN: What has the impact been for beta customers? Used to form profiles of businesses and trends on a larger scale?  

HS: It’s still early days but picture it like this: if you know that your best customers are logistics companies west of the Mississippi and you want to reach a VP, the wealth of information available to you about those companies and that VP changes the sales game. Workflows becomes a foundational data platform – democratizing ABM and making it more effective. 

B2BNN: Is this the automation of ABM? 

HS: I think this is the next evolution: a foundational data platform that will automate ABM. 

You can learn more about Workflows here.

Check back for updates on how those beta customers are doing later in 2020!

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