Being a trusted knowledge source is how Amber Hawks, senior director of client partnerships at Ibotta, builds lasting relationships with her clients.
And her secret to doing so? Data.
Before any client interaction, Hawks and her team make sure they have a data-backed understanding of the company’s market challenges. Knowing what the customer is up against helps Hawks and her team consult and guide the client through the best route forward.
“We use these insights to advise clients on the most impactful actions they can take to grow their business,” Hawks said.
Built In spoke with Hawks about the tools that she and the sales team at Ibotta use to steer clients to success.
Ibotta is a performance marketing platform that allows brands to deliver digital promotions to millions of consumers through a network of publishers called the Ibotta Performance Network.
Tell us about your tech stack. What tools do you use to gather and organize data? Which tools do you rely on most in your daily work?
Our sales team utilizes a robust tech stack that provides deep insights into the retail landscape for our clients, from both the Ibotta and the total national perspective. This intel is accessible in Looker, a business intelligence tool, in order to get a clear picture of market performance. Our Looker interface allows us to quickly identify and analyze a brand, manufacturer or category. We also leverage our proprietary Ibotta Portal, a homegrown tool that gives our team and our clients historical and near-real-time insights into campaign performance. Lastly, we partner with industry data providers to round out our understanding of consumer purchasing trends and behaviors across the entire United States. Collectively, these tools give us a comprehensive view of the market, allowing us to be highly consultative with our clients.
How has data helped you close a deal?
Data is fundamental to our sales process and has been instrumental in closing deals. A recent example from the beverage team illustrates this perfectly. By leveraging data from an industry provider, we identified a year-over-year decline in market share for a particular brand. We then cross-referenced this with our own internal data and discovered that a change in their campaign activity led to consumers buying fewer items on a single shopping trip. We used this insight to propose a new, data-backed campaign designed to incentivize consumers to purchase more than one item per trip. This recommendation directly addressed their business challenge, leading to a new campaign for Ibotta and a positive business outcome for our client. Using data to identify and solve specific client problems is how we move beyond transactional relationships and build true partnerships.
How does sales and customer data enhance your company’s sales organization? What data do you find most important in the sales process?
The most critical data for us is anything that provides a robust understanding of our clients’ business performance. To be truly consultative and client-centric, we need to know exactly how they’re performing in the market. This includes understanding their category, their brand’s performance and their competitive landscape. We use these insights to advise clients on the most impactful actions they can take to grow their business. By using data to identify and solve client challenges, we create win-win scenarios that forge lasting partnerships.
