In sales, many jobs are now managed through centralized cloud software, including CRMs, email marketing platforms and integration solutions. Sales data is then easily accessible with these platforms.
Global brands are using their data to make high-quality business decisions, and any company can use tools and intelligence to achieve data-driven sales success. With such a wide imbalance of knowledge and skills, the process of sifting through so much data can be overwhelming, while knowing what to do with that data once you find it is another challenge.
In this article, we will discuss how a data-driven approach to sales can help your company in achieving its goals.
Definition Of Sales Data
Sales data is a term that includes a large number of metrics, but, broadly speaking, any measurable trend in relation to the sales process could be considered viable sales data. Cloud CRM solutions can help you collect this data, but it's important to understand how to read and interpret this data to best understand what its metrics mean for your business and where you can improve.
It is hard to know which metric, average deal time in the pipeline or engagement rates for email campaigns will provide more data about your performance. Would a forecast base on successful meeting rates or average deal size be most beneficial?
With the right analysis tools in place, you have the data and insights needed to identify trends for better sales forecasting and goals for the organization.
The key to success is to know when and which metric needs to be used.
Key Sales Metrics
Focus on the data that offer you the best value. Once you've incorporated sales data analysis into your workflow, you can focus on metrics that are more particular to what you want. To really understand how your marketing is working, you have to know what metrics matter the most. Here are the most important:
Using the metrics mentioned above, for instance, measuring the length of the conversion funnel and retention rates, you'll be able to change your sales process for the better. The data that helps you create reports will also show you which attributes are affecting particular areas of your business.
How To Collect Your Sales Data?
Spreadsheets are helpful when you need to gather data or information of another type, but a CRM platform allows you to crunch your data and extract insights that will help you make better decisions.
The sheer amount of leads, deals and communications to keep track of can overwhelm a person, so you need software that is streamlined and easy to access. Always keep your team aware of the tool, how it works, and what information you're receiving after every contact they make.
To get ahead of your competition, set up a sales pipeline to monitor your progress, find valuable data and follow trends.
What are the key differences between a spreadsheet and a CRM?
What are Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are free and provide a helpful overview of your current sales operation. They can also be programmed to automatically do calculations for you. The disadvantage of these machine learning systems is that they rely on input from humans in order to improve their results. If you're willing to sacrifice data entry time, these automated CRMs are worth looking at.
It's important to keep tabs on all interactions with your leads, including emails and phone calls. This usually means you have to run a spreadsheet.
What is CRM?
Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) provides a substantial advancement over spreadsheet software in various ways. CRM helps automate data entry, saves your team time and makes sure you don't lose track of leads. Integrations with other programs on mobile devices and third-party add-ons expand the scope of things that can be monitored.
Did your automated email campaigns convert more customers? How long was the average call length? Where do you most often receive new leads? With sales analytics, you can quantify the most successful selling methods and then replicate them in order to dominate your sales competition.
Your CRM will have data on pushing the most effective leads back into the pipeline, as well as potential bottlenecks in your sales process, like reviewing sales data to find areas for improvement.
In addition to long-term data being relevant, it can come from a variety of sources. For example, once you've been collecting data for a few weeks and kept reporting it, that information will become more accurate with time. Additionally, your collector account will provide you with an extended pool of data and sales information to draw on.
Next step after recording your sales data
Let's review some of the simpler data we reviewed before to compare it with more complex sales data. We already looked at some of the simpler data, but now let's look at how to analyze sales data that's a little more complicated but well worth the effort.
Similarities in sales
With this data, you'll easily determine your potential revenue the closer you are to closing a deal. Depending on your business needs, segments of your pipeline may have different potential revenues generated and tracked.
To determine if you are likely to close a sale, you will need to compare your successful deals against any that failed to close and add up the number of unsuccessful sales. Working out when they stopped working can give you an idea of how your pricing strategy requires revision.
Once you collect your data, it's time to use it to determine how likely a lead is to be closed. A cold calling lead has a 10% success rate through the whole pipeline, with a 40% success rate once it enters the pipeline after meeting someone.
Once you know what is in the pipeline, it becomes easier to make decisions. Knowing how much revenue is on its way, whether it will be quickly achieved, and if enough of them will convert, you can adjust the strategy.
Sales forecast
Sales forecasts can be a powerful tool for both your company and your colleagues. They allow you to plan not just on what is needed today or tomorrow but in the months and years that follow. In order to create a sales forecast, use tendencies in your past data that are expected to be present in the future.
We recommend that when creating a sales forecast, your combine data from how many potential customers you think will be coming to your store with historical market data and try to estimate how much revenue might come in due to differences in market conditions and past business growth.
Depending on the industry you're in, comparing data from previous years and months will help you determine if this is a regular occurrence during the winter months with regard to sales. By using historical data to predict patterns and account for variations, you create more accurate forecasts and realistic goals that are achieved by your team.
If your team has gone through a period of growth, new numbers might not apply. For example, you might be working with more leads and experimenting with a new sales structure or tools.
For any changes to your sales process, you can use the data you've gathered already to make a forecast that will help you adjust your strategy when necessary. Keep a strong selling focus despite the changes in your team by ensuring that you have a reliable and strong selling process.
Building a sales process that works
Armed with your data, you now have all the skills necessary to boost your sales and increase revenue. Now you can use those skills to make your sale process as efficient as possible.
With sales data analysis, you can work smarter and have more success. Your sales team will be happier and more motivated because they contribute to their own successes by analyzing the data for themselves and meeting their sales goals.
Describing how to identify your bottlenecks
Look first to your pipeline as the place to start. If you want your team to improve productivity, you'll need to change their behaviour. Always ask what factors are stopping your business from reaching its sales potential. By figuring out where the challenges are, you can start to rectify them and improve.
Once you've identified parts of your pipeline that are causing bottlenecks, it's as simple a case of examining data to extrapolate why deals are not progressing.
Let's understand with an example:
You recognized that when sales representatives followed up in a day with their initial cold call, they were far more likely to close the deal. However, it takes your representatives as long as two days or longer sometimes to follow up with the new lead. You have recognized this; you can now discuss the following in a sales meeting or even add a section on prompt follow-ups to your sales training.
You should also track how long deals sit in each stage of your pipeline. If transactions are being consistently held up, you'll know to get your team's process improved. Perhaps, customers are not receiving enough follow-up communications from the sales team. Maybe you offer them additional value to keep them on the radar? With this data, the reason behind why they're not making progress becomes clear.
Using sales activities
We've made the guesswork for you; take some time to do surgery on your sales process. Buyers and sellers have access to more powerful tools than before, thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning.
The following steps will boost sales based on your data.
Generating leads
With your customers' social media activity, you can identify the people who you know like your products the best and ask them to help spread word of mouth. You can use their contact info in your CRM to find their email addresses or get started with referrals.
An ideal situation is to qualify leads with the intention of selling your product or service. You can determine which leads you would focus on in this scenario by tracking where they're generated from and other factors such as whether or not they find it beneficial to continue.
Cold leads
In order to have the best chance of getting a meeting from your cold calls, make sure you have a trend of poor sales conversion rates. Develop strategies with your team for increasing call length for better conversions.
Finding and securing new leads
One of the best ways to improve your relationships with leads and clients is to implement strategies at key points in your sales pipeline and track how likely prospects are to move onto the next stage of the process to see if they're effective.
By A/B testing personalized emails and tracking the effect in order to see if it increases lead opens or clicks, you can determine whether these tactics are most effective for your business. See if increased open or click rates result in leads moving through the pipeline faster.
To reap the rewards of building client relationships, you must act with patience by staying in touch with them through social media. Use automated marketing campaigns to send in-depth information when a new customer becomes interested in your products or services and track their engagement as a new client on your CRM.
Experiment with your communication skills
By understanding how customer interaction changes over the pipeline, it's easier for marketers to optimize their email templates. A few key points to consider are what you want out of each template and whether or not your approach has been proven successful for that point in the sales funnel. The best way to analyze your success is to look at the response from these emails in the CRM system and how long it takes for your reps to send them out.
Over time, you can see whether or not contacting your leads at the best times of the day or week is more successful. If it's making less sense to contact them on different days and times, you can include smaller emails and call more often by putting them in the specific pipeline stage (begging, reading an email, etc.).
Functions of the CRM
Knowing that email is one of the most effective ways to convert leads, use automation tools to follow up without forgetting and priority emails to keep your leads interested.
Through analysis of your successes and failures, you can identify the personal information that gets you the best results and use this knowledge to build relationships with leads in seconds or less. Smart Contact Data uses machine learning to automatically apply relevant content to any email, tweet, or blog post.
You can use your CRM to provide free time for your clients for them to choose the meeting time that works best for them, and you know it will be good for you. By analyzing how many leads at the meeting stage get moved through to product demonstration and then how many go on to close, you can see how the scheduler affects conversion rates.
Sales activities are categorized in four areas:
- Approaching
- Building and developing relationships
- Showing your value to your prospects
- Closing
With structured data and machine learning, you can automate your content creation process to generate more relevant and refined information. The more data you collect, the better and more efficient your process becomes.
Staff reporting
Stay in touch with your team through daily, weekly, and monthly reports. Each imposes its own function, so you know what you need to do going into the next month. Daily reports to remind you of the number of tasks performed (calls made, leads generated), ensuring that your team's objectives are reaching their mark. Be careful not to use this time to manage your rep's work.
Weekly meetings allow sales reps to track sales progress and provide feedback. The meeting also allows you to address any issues revealed during the meeting. A macro view of your sales pipeline. Use this report to see how your conversion rate, team performance and rank in relation to other metrics.
Annual reports are important for individuals to know about your business achievements and plans. A reporting structure allows you to see, in real time, how your data is affecting your sales and gives the best idea of what actions should be taken.
How to put your data with dashboards
With a thorough understanding of your process, you can make the necessary adjustments. You know what type of documentation and life-cycle is needed to produce a predictable result. The larger company knows when you're succeeding and why you're successful. You can use KPIs to measure how much progress your team has made in relation to meeting certain goals, such as sales projections.
The best way to prepare a presentation with data is to treat it as if it's a story. Use the numbers to depict what can happen and lead to an inevitable conclusion. Consider your audience when creating your presentation, too. The marketers want to know how many of their leads converted into customers, while finance will want revenue figures.
Next, you need a program that can mash up your data and more.
If you have more data than can fit in a spreadsheet, then EzzyCRM offers versatility and broader functionality for better management of statistics.
With EzzyCRM, you can create and share your own sales dashboards, which can feature a variety of metrics. There are several dashboards that you can use with ease. In these, you can track a variety of data, like presentation test results and staff performance.
Knowing the right sources, sales success is immediately achievable, and data can be used to measure this. Getting the right data is easy, and with it, you can see how your company has grown over time.
How should you analyze sales data?
Identify key metrics of a successful sales process, such as the per cent of responses that lead to a win and the average size of a deal. You can track a lead's travels through your pipeline using a tool such as EzzyCRM.
How Data Visualization Can Help
You can make your sales process more successful by learning how to fully utilize the data you have access to. Your data will enable you to better generate leads, engage with clients and retain them, leading to more sales.
With incremental data gained from the sales cycles we've gone through, you'll have a cycle that provides incremental data, leading to many options on how to save time and make money.
Still, data must be constantly analyzed. Google will not stop, and you want to make sure your team has the best chance it can to keep up with the marketplace.