IHS Markit - How a Global Information Provider is Driving Sales Performance with Insights from LinkedIn Sales Navigator

If there’s a company that understands the power of insights, it’s IHS Markit. The company was founded to provide critical information and insights to businesses, financial institutions and governments. It uses powerful data and careful analysis to present customers with a richer, highly integrated view of their world.

IHS Markit expertise allows it to serve multiple industries, including those in aerospace, defence and security, automotive, chemical, energy and natural resources, financial markets, governments, life sciences, maritime and trade, as well as technology verticals. While this offers many opportunities for IHS Markit, it poses an immense challenge for its sales team.

Associate Director Sam Devine explains:

“In my role, I oversee the maritime and trade vertical in Australia, New Zealand the South Pacific islands, and within this vertical, we focus on three main client segments— Marine & Logistics, Government & Defence and Commodities & Financial services. From a sales perspective, it’s a wide target market, which makes it challenging to develop an intimate understanding of each segment and each potential client.”

Having used LinkedIn Sales Navigator in his previous role with another company, Sam knew that the tool would be a powerful addition to his prospecting arsenal. When he joined IHS Markit three years ago, he made sure to bring LinkedIn Sales Navigator with him.

“When I joined IHS Markit I wanted to continue using LinkedIn Sales Navigator having seen the benefit in previous roles.” — Sam Devine, Associate Director, IHS Markit

Using Insights to Sell

“For me, the biggest use case of LinkedIn Sales Navigator is being able to tag key prospective accounts and the relevant contacts within that account to get instant updates on what’s happening with them delivered directly to my inbox,” said Sam.

This information is important to the sales process, as it enables Sam to best position IHS Markit and its capabilities in a way that shows prospective customers how these can help them solve a problem or grasp an opportunity. For this reason, Sam credits LinkedIn Sales Navigator for contributing to about 80% of the deals he has closed with corporates, including one notable account that he scored in his early days with the company.

“When I first started at IHS Markit, I identified several of the largest Australia-based exporters with lead potential and tagged them using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. One day, I received an update that a livestock exporter on my list was having trouble with one of their vessels. This was causing them to lose time mid-ocean. I used this as a conversation starter to reach out to a couple of commercial operators within this specific account to learn more about their shipping operations. The conversation grew and, four months later, turned into an arrangement that generates a significant amount a year for us,” shared Sam.

This proves to the 10-year sales veteran that access to information has assisted in reshaping the sales landscape, and the future of selling hinges on customer insights.

“Access to information is getting easier,” he points out. “Customers now have product information at their fingertips — they no longer need a salesperson who is merely a product expert; they want a salesperson who also understands their industry and their challenges. In delivering a value-added, insights-driven experience to the customer, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is definitely a handy tool to have.”

“With LinkedIn Sales Navigator, I get constant updates on what’s happening across all my prospects delivered to me. This really gets me ahead because it would be a far more time consuming process to search for that level of information on my own.”

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