Data Driven Sales

In today’s business world, data is king. By leveraging data-driven sales strategies, businesses can gain a competitive edge and drive revenue growth. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of data-driven sales strategies and provide tips on how to implement them effectively. Whether you’re a small business owner or a sales professional, this guide will help you harness the power of data to boost your bottom line.

As technology continues to increase and improve, data is available for everything and everyone. This shift is evident in sales, lead generation, sales consulting and marketing. As information continues to grow, more sales teams and managers are interested in numbers, beyond just revenues. They want to know, measure and understanding the sales activities that make the revenue possible.

Even though this trend if growing, research shows that 40% of organizations feel their data is still scattered, unorganized and sometimes unclear. This limits their visibility and as such 56% of executive sales people are unhappy with their ability to see their data and offer valuable and relevant data driven insights. If you feel this an issue with your sales team, you aren’t alone. Here are some simple steps to begin your data driven sales strategy:

Start with a simple model:

Sometimes the best step to take, is the smallest. Start evaluating your data with just a few simple data captures:

• How many calls made?
• How many connects?
• How many were qualified?
• How many made it to demo?
• How many closed

Once you have this information captured, you can begin to measure this month over month. You will notice trends and be able to report on real numbers and results.

Data Driven sales coaching:

How many times have you heard sales managers continually complain that people aren’t making enough calls? Often times when revenue starts to dip, managers are left scrambling, sometimes making half hazards guesses as to what has happened.

Data driven coaching takes away the emotion, assumptions and defensiveness of sales coaching  – because number don’t lie.

If sales managers are willing to create the discipline of running the data, some of those assumptions might not be correct.  Use data to help coach and inspire sales teams to work on the areas the data is showing needs improvement. Maybe your sales team is making plenty of calls, but their connect rates are low. Knowing the actual data means you can create a custom coaching plan for that month, focusing on e-mails, voicemails and the quality of a call, rather than just the quantity. Data helps build a coaching plan on solution’s that will help each individual sales rep grow.

A recent study by Knowledge Tree showed that sales teams that received 3 hours of sales coaching (at minimum), exceeded their sales goals by 7%, grew revenue by 25% and found their close rate grew by 70%. Data-driven sales coaching will have a positive impact from lead generation to close.

Experimentation:

Never stop thinking outside of the box and try new things. Things like new partner programs, or different sales channels, or other ideas you have brewing, use the data to experiment.

The data will help you know if you’ve reached your goal, the impact on your revenue and the benefit that this could:

• Incubate and empower your people – let them try things!
• Form a theory
• Set a goal
• Find the leader who will run with it
• Find the shortest amount of time you can properly execute your experiment
• Do it!

Lean into data in every area of your sales. Lead generation, sales consulting, sales hiring, marketing efforts – everything can use data driven insights and information.

If you’d like to implement data driven sales structures in your business, let’s connect and let us get you on the path towards helpful data and increasing revenue!

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