How Data Analytics Empowers Sales Management

Sales management relates closely to analyzing data and human performance and deriving from them a plan for market success.

This article focuses on how sales analytics can improve the bottom line of your business in real-time.

Let’s get started without further ado.

Role of Data Analytics in Sales

A recent article published by McKinsey and Company identified four specific areas within the selling process where data analytics adds considerable value. These include:

• Lead generation
• Pricing management
• Customer care
• Selling opportunities

The amount of available data, the currency of that data and its overall quality are of utmost concern for the sales manager.

Let’s take a look at how sales management analytics makes a positive impact in each of these four areas.

Lead Generation

Modern buyers are smart. They can self-educate themselves on pain mitigation, problem-solving, and product comparisons. Outbound telemarketing and cold usually don’t work anymore.

Smart companies understand this and facilitate the buyer’s knowledge quest through websites offering high-value content. This content is available in various formats to appeal to early, mid- and late-stage prospects. Marketing automation software tracks the online behavior of visitors and compiles historical records on those visits.

Sophisticated analytics software weighs the assorted data elements collected including content accessed, length and frequency of the visit. It then compares these elements with CRM-based demographic data related to the visitor.

This gives sales managers a complete picture of an opportunity based on valuable data. The genuine buyers and tire kickers are automatically segregated, and this further drives the decision to watch, contact or follow up.

Pricing Management

When it comes to sales management, it’s important that pricing is correct in terms of special promotions, price localization, account status, and taxing requirements. Sales managers who deal with multiple sales channels may come across this as a management challenge.

Back-office systems maintain critical data with respect to country, price, taxation and discounting parameters. What’s important is to capture those assorted factors and make them readily available to salespeople. This is where sales data analysis software is required.

EZlytix reports can integrate with your CRM systems and fetch the most accurate pricing data. Thus, your sales managers don’t have to sift through reams of product and pricing memos and can quote the right price.

Customer Care and Matching Talent with Opportunity

Territory assignments were initially based on geographical factors, vertical industry classifications, and sales rep seniority. Nowadays, sales managers have to deal with a much more compelling set of criteria when assigning the talent to opportunity.

The process of selling is evolving. Customers expect more from the Sales team in addition to the features and benefits. They want to interact with sales reps who can provide insights and advice to help them achieve success. Therefore, sales managers should be able to match their human assets with such needs.

Data related to the individual sales rep’s history can help sales managers identify and assign a resource with specific experiences and knowledge that matches the needs of a given prospect.

This approach is more effective than leaving the success of a relationship to the chances of who happens to attend the customer support desk.

Selling Opportunities

If you’re a sales manager, you are often asked about how much business you expect to close this month. Analytics software can help you answer this question confidently, backed by real insights.

After using analytics solutions, sales managers are not required to produce obligatory reports based on the vague promises of customers or sales reps.

Data provides a 360-degree view of what sales reps are doing and how they are doing it. Marketing automation tools and CRM systems generate all types of data that reflect the activities of sales reps and prospects.

Touches, phone calls, sales calls, contacts, visits, physical movements, quotes issued, proposals delivered and win/loss reports are some of the metrics provided by data analytics solutions. A deeper analysis of these metrics allows managers to pick up on what phase of a selling transaction is more difficult for a given rep.

Such analysis helps sales managers improve their team’s performance and ultimately boosts the selling opportunities.

Start Using a Data Analytics Solution Today

After reading this article, you should have understood that analytics is not an option but a need. Putting proven systems in place can provide you with better insights in real-time. The experts at EZlytix can help you implement the most robust analytics infrastructure. Get started today!