As the saying goes, knowledge is power. And in the information age, this is especially true when it comes to sales. With quality information in hand, your sales team can better understand what will appeal to a prospect, how likely it is that they are a good fit for your solutions, their interest in your company, and when they are ready to move forward with a procurement decision.
Empowered with the right data, salespeople will understand their prospects’ pain points, what combinations of products and services will provide value, and what type of nurture messaging will prove the most engaging.
However, without enough information, sales teams are often left to cold calling and guesswork. By providing a proper framework for collecting and tracking useful data for your sales team, you can ensure they are better equipped to achieve their KPIs and grow their sales.
The Right Data Can Streamline Your Sales Process
Quality information can go a long way in streamlining the sales process and improving your team’s capabilities. Research from McKinsey highlights four key areas where analytics can help improve sales:
1. Improve Lead Generation
First, analytics can improve lead generation and lead scoring, making it easier for sales professionals to identify prospects who are a good fit for their company’s services. Data can also reveal new sales opportunities that might otherwise go undetected. This information can come from website or social media stats, as well as firmographic data and third-party “intent” data.
2. Maximize Customer Lifetime Value
Analytics also can improve sales planning, leaving teams better positioned to solve customer problems. For example, ABM (accounts-based marketing) campaign engagement data can help your team identify which messages are most appealing to prospects and which prospects are most ready to buy.
In addition, the use of CRM tools can be especially helpful in tracking prospect and client interactions—not only to ensure that no prospect slips through the cracks, but also to maximize the lifetime value of existing customers by identifying upselling opportunities and reducing churn.
3. Get the Right Price
The use of CPQ (configure, price, quote) software can improve your sales team’s ability to provide more dynamic pricing and agile deal negotiations, while keeping quotes for the company within acceptable boundaries on an automated basis. This also can enable A/B price testing to further improve sales processes.
4. Match the Right People to Make Better Deals
Finally, data can also improve management processes by identifying top sales performers and allocating them to high-value accounts to improve profitability. At the same time, identifying the traits of successful deal flows—be it communication frequency or some other attribute—can lead to further improvements in process management and talent development.
Data not only enables your top performers to do their job more effectively. It also gives you the necessary resources to boost the performance of the entire sales team. This ultimately will allow you to make the most of your sales budget by increasing your conversion rate, customer lifetime revenue, and other vital metrics.
Information Will Improve Cross-Team Collaboration
Another key area where information can benefit your sales team is the sharing of internal data between teams. “Your sales team doesn’t work in a vacuum—they work in conjunction with operations and finance teams as well,” says Gideon Thomas, CMO of DealHub.
"When information and processes are siloed, it becomes a challenge for these teams to collaborate effectively,” he says. "CPQ solutions must be set up in a way where these ‘separate’ teams can seamlessly share information as needed. When the sales team has accurate, up-to-date information that is synced with other relevant departments, they can focus on selling instead of worrying about whether they are providing good data to prospects.”
Eliminating data silos can help ensure transparency and trust between teams. It keeps all stakeholders on the same page so that salespeople can provide accurate information to prospects, while also ensuring a smooth onboarding process for new clients.
This can be especially valuable in creating alignment between sales and marketing teams. The Harvard Business Review reports misalignment between sales and marketing is reported by 90% of sales and marketing professionals, leading to roughly $1 trillion in losses globally each year.
For sales and marketing teams, communicating learned needs about clients—such as information learned from conversations with sales leads or certain types of content marketing receiving higher levels of traffic—can help both sales and marketing do their jobs better. Sharing data improves alignment and collaboration, which in turn improves problem-solving and enhances customer outreach.
Beware Information Overload
As valuable as giving more information to your sales team can be, you should also be mindful of the risks of information overload. Too much information can be just as detrimental as too little information, as your sales team is forced to decide which data is beneficial and which is less relevant.
According to research, common detrimental outcomes from information overload include “inefficient work, confusion, delay in making decisions, lack of critical evaluation of information, loss of control over information, refusal to receive communication, lack of general perspective, greater tolerance for error, anxiety, stress [and more].” All of this can have a very real, negative impact in the workplace.
Too much information can ultimately limit the effectiveness of your sales team, particularly if they have many prospects to deal with. Strike a careful balance in providing your team with plenty of information, while also ensuring that they are only given data that has actual value and relevance to their work.
Make the Most of Your Data
When sales teams are given information that is relevant to their KPIs and your business’s goals, they can make smarter decisions regarding which leads they should pursue.
They will also better understand how to appeal to top prospects. Notably, quality data can also help them make these decisions faster, shortening the time to sell, and creating a more responsive sales system that will be more persuasive and appealing.
