Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

I have used several with the sales teams. Hoovers for the North American sales force and several for the European ones.

To be honest, I found that only a hand full (and I literally mean a hand full) have used what came out of it. That's why I have decided, although it is a great tool (especially Hoovers, especially if you have an industry aligned sales force), to leave it up to the sales teams themselves to do the investment and do the customer profiling activities. Coming from marketing is does not create a sense of ownership.

OK, but I assume you have a much better sales force than what I have been used to. In that case, I can say Hoovers is great. Especially the integration it gave into Siebel, so sales people can stay in their Siebel application and browse the Hoovers database.

I also liked the fact that you could e-mail executives a limited number of times, get great industry background articles. The data itself is the least I would expect from such a vendor.