Why Sales Data Analysis Is Crucial to Better Decision Making

Historically, sales success has relied on intuition and subjectivity.  Sales reps conduct in-depth research on prospects and then chase the most suitable fits. This process relies on trial and error to figure out prospects’ expectations and apply the rep’s intuitions to understand prospects’ pain points. 

However, things are changing nowadays. Reps use sales data analysis to make critical decisions. Adopting a data-driven sales approach takes subjectivity out of the equation and makes the whole process of selling more predictable and efficient. 

This article will discuss sales data analysis and how B2B organizations can leverage it for better decision-making. So, let’s begin. 

 What Is Sales Data? 

Sales data is any information that your sales team can utilize to improve their decision-making. Sales data can provide actionable insights into a sales team’s performance, help them build better strategies, and improve organizational decision-making.  

If you can generate sufficient sales data from various sources and your sales team knows how to interpret these datasets, you’re all set. Advanced software and cloud CRM solutions can help you generate a large volume of sales data. But collecting sales data is not always enough. You have to figure out how to use these datasets, identify improvement areas and plan how your decisions will change by using these datasets. 

The most important question here may be which sales data analysis tool you should use to make the most of the sales data? If you’re seeking an answer to all these questions, don’t worry. We have it all covered.

Why Does Sales Data Matter? 

B2B organizations should be highly involved in their sales decision-making process. And to do that, they must learn how to leverage sales data properly. But, why do sales data even matter? 

Let us help you out here: 

1. Discover your ideal customers 

Your ideal customer is any individual who intends to buy your products and services. But the question is how do you discover the individuals who have sufficient purchase intent and are willing to purchase from you? That’s where the concept of sales data comes into the picture.

With essential sales datasets like the individual’s name, job title, company details, and email address, it becomes easier to find out whether or not a prospect will be interested in purchasing from you. If you can develop a basic idea of the prospect’s buying intent, it becomes simpler for you to figure out whether or not the prospect will be a good fit for further interaction. 

2. Expedite your prospecting process 

One of the major activities of any sales rep is reaching out to more prospects through cold calls, social selling, and emails. But it will be a complete waste of time for them if they don’t have proper sales data.

Your reps can’t reach out to just anyone and everyone. For a data-driven B2B lead generation, appropriate sales information is a must. 

3. Ensure sales process optimization  

Sales managers are always seeking new ways to improve their sales team’s performance. But how are they supposed to do that if they don’t have actionable insights?

A sales database helps the sales managers to identify and track relevant sales data. Therefore it becomes easier to figure out where the backlogs are and how they can streamline the sales process.

6 Ways Sales Data Helps You Achieve Growth 

A data-driven sales approach can win you more customers and build long-term relationships. Here are the six major ways to use sales data for fast growth and transformation: 

1. Identify new lead generation options 
2. Don’t chase prospects with low purchase intent 
3. Nurture and build relationships with leads and customers 
4. Experiment and improve your communication process 
5. Track your sales team’s performance regularly
6. Master the decision-making process 

1. Identify new lead generation options 

High-quality sales data can be a major source of new lead generation for your sales team. Once you have successfully collected the sales data from authentic sources, you can use a sales analytics tool like Salesken to discover the purchase intent of the prospects. Such a tool can help you with lead scoring. That way, reps will understand which prospect is most likely to convert into customers and can direct their efforts accordingly.

Some popular sources of high-quality sales data are as follows: 

• You can review the prospect’s purchase history to find out what solutions they’re currently using and how satisfied are they with the currently available solution 
• You can perform a quick sales pipeline analysis on your buyer persona, to distinguish between customers with high purchase intent and customers with lower purchase intent 
• Dive into various customer activity data like email open rates, click rate, engagement rate, unsubscribe rate, etc. 
  

2. Don’t chase prospects with low purchase intent 

Not all customers will fit the criteria of your buyer persona. In B2B selling, reps should always focus on converting leads who are a good fit. B2B lead generation process involves high costs, energy, and a lot of valuable time. You can’t risk your conversion process by targeting bad-fit prospects as it will delay your whole lead generation process. 

With quality sales data and a proper sales data analysis process, you can answer the following questions: 

• Can you provide the prospects with their functional requirements? 
• Do the prospects have the required resources to support your solution? 
• Do the prospects have sufficient skills to use your products? 

Once you answer these questions, you can easily position a prospect based on your target buyer persona and keep going from there. 

3. Nurture and build relationships with leads and customers 

High-quality sales data not only help you identify the proper leads but also helps you nurture them with suitable strategies and approaches.

Here are the best ways to leverage sales data for better relationship building: 

4. Experiment and improve your communication process 

Trial and error is the secret to a successful sales or marketing campaign, so what’s better than a regular trial and error process? A data-driven one. So, use the collected sales data to experiment and apply the results to modify your marketing strategy.

Try different ways of communication with your prospects. From email outreach to social media outreach, try it all. Also, don’t stop at the experiments. Analyze the results and build your sales strategy accordingly. 

5. Track your sales team’s performance regularly

Use a sales enablement tool like Salesken to track your sales team’s performance regularly. Here’s how it can help: 

• With cutting-edge conversational analytics, Salesken can analyze your reps’ conversations with prospects. 
• It can help offer in-depth insights on the prospect’s purchase intent and highlight improvement areas in the sales pitch. 
• Salesken can further provide sales coaching to the reps. That way they can work on their individual strengths and weaknesses and perfect their sales pitches.  

6. Master the decision-making process 

Use consistent sales data to support your sales decision-making process. Updated sales datasets can predict future sales patterns for your team and drive more lead generation opportunities.

Quality sales data empowers the decision-making process and generates new opportunities for your team. It is the first step towards developing a data-driven sales team. 

How B2B Companies Can Improve Their Sales Data Analysis

Sales data analysis is a major driving factor behind the significant sales of your organization. Here’s how you can improve data analysis in sales: 

1. Automate everything 

When you’re analyzing sales data, you have to focus on multiple data sources at the same time. Plus, each of these sources can generate a large volume of data. So, there’s no way to do this manually. Manual analysis of sales data can take you months if not years. So, the best way to deal with this is through automation. Use end-to-end automation to collect, store and analyze the sales datasets. That way, you can spend more meaningful time analyzing these datasets. 

2. Improve visualization 

While decision-making, make sure to focus on data visualization. Use a consolidated dashboard where you can witness dynamic visualization with graphs, charts (bar charts, line charts, comparison charts, slope charts), and other actionable insights. That way you can develop actionable insights and build apt strategies for your sales team’s future convenience. 

3. Focus more on data monitoring 

Some of the major sales data sources to track regularly are: 

• New led conversion data points 
• Any changes in the online behavior of leads/customers 
• Social media engagement KPIs 
• Email marketing KPIs 
  

Final Words 

Remember that sales data and proper sales data analysis tools can speed up your growth rapidly. Make sure that you invest in a sales data analysis tool at the earliest. It will open new doors of opportunities for your sales team and ensure higher conversion. Make the most of your sales data and build a data-driven sales team with Salesken.