“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; 

the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” 

–John Wanamaker 

In today’s data-rich marketing industry, the Wanamakerinside each of us can rest easy. We can track the ROI of each dollar we put toward advertising, and, assuming our data is good, that ROI tends to be pretty high. 

But perhaps we shouldn’t make assumptions. 

To be effective at their jobs, customer-facing B2B sellers need clean, high-quality, timely information about their prospects. When they have the knowledge, they can build a customized message outlining how their company will provide value to their prospective clients. 

Unfortunately, even when companies have the data their marketers and sales people need, it often sits siloed outside of their CRM systems – totally useless. 

Umberto Milletti has spent nearly two decades developing a system that delivers B2B sellers clean, accurate data about their prospects. Umberto’s company, InsideView, provides comprehensive, real-time information about companies and their people. 

In 2013, InsideView struck up a deal with Microsoft. As a result, InsideView’s “Insights” product started shipping with Microsoft Dynamics 365 at no charge to the customer, ostensibly solving the problem of having clean data sitting outside a company’s CRM system. 

“My goal has always been to make sales and marketing conversations better; more productive for everybody,” says Umberto. “The Customer hates being contacted by people who know nothing about their business and have nothing relevant to offer, and sales and marketing people hate wasting their money and their time targeting the wrong account.” 

Recently, Demandbase, a top-of-the-funnel automation and technology SaaS company, acquired InsideView.  

Demandbase has been making sweeping acquisitions across the B2B marketing space, scooping up companies like Engagio in 2020 and DemandMatrix in 2021.  

Having expanded its offerings through its purchases, Demandbase has positioned itself to provide its customers with comprehensive information about B2B clients’ corporate structures and day-to-day digital activities. 

For example, Demandbase has information about what products companies’ logged-in accounts search for on the web, what kinds of ads they consume, what types of articles they read, and more. 

It’s a veritable goldmine of data for B2B sellers. And that as that little Wanamaker inside us knows, buying actionable data is money well-spent.