anVendor vs HG Insights

Both products can build a lead list with spend attached. The difference is what qualifies a lead: HG Insights models adoption and IT spend across the market, while anVendor looks for current subscription evidence at each named company, then prices what it finds from the vendor's plans.

What HG Insights does well

Scale, and the kind of question scale answers. Modelled technographics built from firmographics, contract records, news and adoption patterns across comparable companies are the right instrument for sizing a category, building a TAM, scoring a territory, or deciding which segment to enter next year. Coverage is enormous, it spans categories no observational method reaches, and for market-level planning a model is not a compromise — it is the correct tool.

Where it goes quiet

It never does, and that is the problem at the account level. A model always returns something: a probability, a projected budget, a score. For one named company that output is a statement about companies that resemble it, not a finding about it. When a rep opens a call with a spend figure that came from a model, they are quoting a projection derived from revenue and headcount, and the prospect knows their own invoice.

anVendor goes quiet instead. Where a vendor's service offers no public sign, it reports nothing rather than guessing — so a service missing from a result means no evidence found, not not used. That is a real limitation, and it is the one we would rather have.

Side by side

Which to use when

• Use HG Insights for anything above the account: how big a category is, which segments to prioritise, how a market is shifting. Models are good at exactly this and anVendor does not attempt it.
• Use anVendor for the named account you are about to call: whether there is evidence they hold the account, how far it has spread, and what the vendor's published prices imply it costs them.

This is not either/or, and the honest answer for most teams is both. They read different evidence, so they disagree in useful ways: a company one of them is silent about is a company the other may well have. What matters is knowing which lens you are looking through when you write the email.

Frequently asked questions

Is a modelled spend figure wrong?

Not wrong — different. A model projects a budget from what companies of a given size and shape typically spend, which is exactly right when you are sizing a market and weak when you are quoting one company. anVendor's figure is also an estimate; the difference is what it is made of: a published list price and an account we found, rather than a projection from revenue and headcount. Neither is an invoice, and large companies rarely pay list.

Does anVendor cover as many companies?

No, and it is not trying to. A model can output a number for every company in existence; an observational method can only report what it finds. Coverage runs to several hundred business services and keeps growing, weighted toward the categories B2B teams actually sell into.

Can I use both?

That is the sensible setup. Model the market to decide where to play, then check the named accounts before you call them.