Speaker Introduction
Nihon Total Telemarketing Co., Ltd.
General Manager, Inside Sales Department, Business Development Division
Mr. Kazuhiko Cho
With approximately 15 years of experience in the contact center industry, he possesses extensive expertise, particularly in outbound operations, and has been involved in launching new B2B and B2C business ventures. Until the previous term, he contributed to business expansion as the general manager overseeing outbound operations and currently leads a team specialized in inside sales.
uSonar Co., Ltd.
Sales Enablement Group, Marketing Team, Master
Takuya Tozaki
After working in sales for advertising agencies and machinery manufacturers, Takuya Tozaki joined uSonar Co., Ltd. in 2015. He has been involved in event marketing and digital marketing, planning and managing over 500 events. He also participated in the launch of inside sales and customer success departments, leveraging that expertise to implement cross-functional marketing initiatives.
Part 1: uSonar Co., Ltd.
Current Status and Challenges in New Business Development
Tozaki highlighted two common challenges in new business development: (1) the inability to secure new appointments, and (2) meetings ending with a 'we will consider it' response, failing to lead to orders.
He pointed out that a major underlying cause of these issues is approaching customers who have no actual need for the product.
For example, he noted that while traditional targeting methods—such as focusing on 'construction companies in Tokyo with annual sales of 5 billion yen or more'—allow for a more refined talk script, they also present significant problems.
First, the needs of the target companies are unclear. You are simply listing companies you want to sell to, without visibility into their actual needs or purchasing timing.
Second, the competition is intense. Since competitors are using similar targeting strategies, sales efforts are concentrated on the same companies, often resulting in a 'race to be first' or falling into 'price competition.'
Changes in the Purchasing Process and the Importance of Intent Data
Citing a research report by Gartner, Tozaki emphasized the importance of understanding buyer behavior.
(Reference: Win More B2B Sales Deals｜Gartner, Inc.)
According to an analysis of the process B2B buyers follow when adopting products and services, the following time allocation has become clear:
Meetings (contact with sellers) account for only about 17%, and considering comparisons across multiple companies, this drops to about 5–6% per company. On the other hand, online information gathering accounts for 27%. This is the stage where buyers proactively collect information through articles, media, and manufacturer websites.
This data indicates that buyers spend far more time gathering information online than they do in meetings. In other words, capturing their movements during this information-gathering stage is critical.
What Is Intent Data?
Intent data is behavioral data that indicates a customer's purchasing intent or signs of interest. Tozaki refers to this as 'Interest Sign' data and explained it by focusing specifically on behavioral data collected on the web.
Intent data is broadly classified into two types.
The first is first-party data, which is data collected directly by your company. uSonar offers a service called "Live Access," which identifies companies visiting your website. By leveraging fixed corporate IP information, it visualizes the companies visiting your site. With "Live Access," you can gauge the level of interest based on the hierarchy of the pages visited.
For example, as a user progresses from a simple service page visit to a pricing page visit, and further to a comparison page visit, it can be inferred that their level of consideration is increasing.
The second is third-party data, which is data collected from third parties, particularly from media access logs. uSonar provides this as a service called "Interest Sign." By setting specific keywords, you can extract companies that have an interest in those keywords based on their page-viewing behavior on external media.
Even for companies that have not yet visited your website or are unaware of your services, you can identify them as potential customers because you know they have an interest in the category.
Intent Data Use Cases
As a use case for intent data, Tozaki introduced a targeting strategy implemented by a company providing cloud accounting software that combined both "Interest Sign" and "Live Access."
When this company created a list by narrowing down the companies extracted via specific keywords to those that also visited their own website, the appointment acquisition rate improved by approximately three times compared to their previous targeting methods.
This demonstrates that by focusing on companies showing customer buying signals rather than simple targeting, sales efficiency is dramatically improved.
Part 2: Japan Total Telemarketing Co., Ltd.
Current Status and Challenges of B2B Sales
Mr. Zhang from Japan Total Telemarketing summarized the challenges occurring in B2B sales into four points.
The first is the decline in lead quality, where there are inquiries but they do not lead to business negotiations. The second is the mismatch in approach timing, where the consideration phase cannot be read, leading to many missed opportunities. The third is the personalization of sales activities, where results tend to be skewed toward specific sales representatives. The fourth is the insufficient utilization of inside sales, where the intended efficient division of labor often fails to function.
Mr. Zhang states that intent data, which indicates signs of customer buying intent and interest, is effective against these challenges.
Actions such as product comparisons or downloading materials on the web are highly likely to indicate that the customer has entered the consideration phase, and capturing these signs to optimize sales timing and prioritization is the greatest value of utilizing intent data.
Intent Data Utilization Scenarios and Results
From this point on, we will introduce actual examples from Japan Total Telemarketing Co., Ltd., including the results achieved.
Case Study 1: New Business Development Utilizing External Web Browsing Behavior (Interest Sign)
Product: Akarui Mirai (Health Support Service)
Akarui Mirai is a comprehensive service aimed at promoting employee health. It supports employee well-being through a multifaceted approach, including risk prediction based on health checkup results, the provision of a meal management app, and the planning and operation of walking events.
Mr. Zhang pointed out that for niche corporate health management services like this, setting the target audience is extremely difficult. While corporate health management initiatives are gaining attention and any company could potentially be a target for such services, the market remains a niche environment for implementation.
In their conventional internal targeting, the company narrowed down prospects by industry and size; for example, they focused their approach on the transportation and logistics industry. Mr. Zhang reflected that they operated on the assumption that companies with professions that physically strain employees, such as drivers, would have a relatively higher need for health management.
The turning point here was the utilization of uSonar's Interest Sign. They set five specific keywords related to corporate health management and extracted companies that were browsing web pages using these keywords.
The essence of this approach is a shift away from static corporate attributes like industry or size toward selecting companies that are actually showing interest in the topic. In other words, they became able to conduct sales activities focused on companies with a high probability of having manifest needs.
As a result, while the sales meeting acquisition rate was 1.04% with their conventional internal targeting, it reached 1.24% with the list extracted via Interest Sign, achieving an improvement of approximately 120%.
Furthermore, he stated that four elements leading to sales results have become apparent. First, by narrowing the approach targets to hot leads, sales efficiency per lead has improved dramatically, and the closing rate has also increased.
Next, he mentioned that they were able to build a reproducible sales process, and by gaining a better understanding of customer needs, they can now identify industries interested in their services through reverse lookup based on keywords.
Additionally, the ability to conduct sales activities based on objective data rather than hypotheses, allowing for evidence-based outreach, has become a major strength.
Case Study 2: Immediate Approach Utilizing Website Visit Behavior (Live Access)
Product: Akarui Mirai (Health Support Service)
Unlike Interest Sign, Live Access targets companies that have visited their own website.
Previously, they only approached companies that had downloaded materials from their website—in other words, companies that had filled out a form and were at a fairly advanced stage of consideration. In contrast, Live Access makes it possible to extract companies that are at the information-gathering stage, one step before the concrete action of downloading materials.
While it is true that companies that download materials have manifest needs and are very hot as leads, the volume is not high. However, with Live Access, there was the advantage of being able to create a list of potential target companies while they are still in the latent need stage of information gathering.
Also, regarding operational points, Mr. Zhang emphasized data extraction every three hours and immediate approach. Considering whether it is more effective to wait a day or two or to attack immediately as browsing history accumulates, Japan Total Telemarketing Co., Ltd. has established a system where Live Access data is extracted every three hours, and newly extracted hot leads are immediately assigned to the inside sales team.
As a result, while the sales meeting acquisition rate for conventional new business development was 1.04%, they achieved 2.64% with Live Access, a result more than 2.5 times higher than before.
Why Intent Data Generates Results
Mr. Zhang cited two important elements regarding why intent data leads to results.
The first is the acquisition of valid data. It is important to acquire multifaceted intent data from both one's own company and external services, which allows for capturing customer purchasing intent from multiple perspectives.
Second, there is the importance of appropriate operational methods. He stated that even if data is acquired, the operational method—how to apply that data to sales activities—is crucial.
Japan Total Telemarketing Co., Ltd. has long provided B2B sales support services, and starting this term, they are also providing inside sales support utilizing uSonar's intent data.
Inside Sales Support Services
Nihon Total Telemarketing's support services are categorized into four areas based on service type and organizational structure.
The first is intent data acquisition and list generation. By leveraging the uSonar database, we can design lists tailored to your specific needs. Furthermore, we provide support for re-engaging existing leads.
The second is the establishment and operational outsourcing of inside sales structures.
Third, we provide comprehensive support ranging from script design to sales talk improvement, and fourth, KPI design and performance monitoring.
There are three key strengths to our support services. First, the re-engagement of leads and the maximization of list value. Many companies struggle with stagnant, untouched leads because they lack the sales resources to maintain a quantitative approach; our inside sales support maximizes the value of these precious resources.
Second, the optimization of sales resources. We support the creation of an environment that allows your team to focus on core tasks, addressing challenges where staff cannot focus on essential sales activities or where processes have become overly personalized or opaque.
Third, business design with a focus on data utilization. Rather than simply aiming to secure appointments, we provide feedback on all information gathered from customer conversations, including real-time feedback and reactions, as tangible deliverables.
In terms of how to utilize our inside sales support services, Nihon Total Telemarketing handles everything from target selection to inside sales, allowing your team to focus entirely on field sales.
During the target selection phase, we utilize the uSonar database to handle the approach, identify challenges, conduct interviews, confirm needs, and secure appointments. Nihon Total Telemarketing acts as the bridge to closing, while the closing and final contract execution remain within your team's domain.
By advancing the division of labor in sales activities, your team can focus on closing deals, thereby maximizing overall sales results.
Summary
Thank you for reading to the end!
In this seminar, Nihon Total Telemarketing introduced a case study demonstrating how shifting from traditional attribute-based targeting to a sales approach that leverages intent data to capture customer buying signals significantly improves sales efficiency.
It is important not only to acquire intent data but also to understand how to utilize it effectively in your approach.
We hope this seminar report serves as a useful reference for your sales activities.
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