October 16, 2012
By Kelly Liyakasa,

InsideView Eyes a Critical Market: Small Business

InsideView, a sales solutions company that has become somewhat synonymous with the phrase "social selling," has forged a partnership with consumer and business credit reporting agency Equifax that will help InsideView lay claim to what it calls an underserved area—marketing and selling to small businesses.

Together with Equifax, InsideView has developed a single-source business data solution for B2B sales and marketing organizations targeting small and midsized companies to have a better means to verify company credit and financial standings.

Equifax has essentially integrated its proprietary technology and business data into the InsideView Sales Intelligence solution, which culls data from news and social media sites for deeper knowledge on prospects. Because the solution links back to a user's CRM system, the salesperson or marketer can view information like credit risk indicators and stability indices without changing their workflow pattern.

Because of Equifax's "having come from the consumer credit side, a lot of small-business credit and information is really tied to the proprietor," explains Umberto Milletti, cofounder and CEO of InsideView. "This provides a lot of information on the small business side about credit worthiness…it's a product-level partnership, and their data helps make InsideView a stronger solution and platform."

Milletti points out that, historically, small and midsize business data was difficult to track because of contributing factors such as higher turnover rates and a general misunderstanding of who to target within an organization or what companies to talk to.

But Milletti says InsideView is looking to leverage its alliance with Equifax to "bring together traditional financial information [with our] social media information to create a level of coverage for small businesses that really hasn't been available in the industry before."

InsideView also announced this week that Hitachi Solutions America's Business Solution Group has retained the company to provide sales intelligence solutions for its Microsoft Dynamics CRM clients, making Hitachi InsideView's first U.S. reseller. The company makes the argument that when augmenting a CRM system like Microsoft Dynamics with InsideView's information on social identity, as well as news and information on companies and individuals, it's easier to connect and engage a prospect in the sales process.