Too Much Sales Data or Not Enough Sales Intelligence?

Too Much Sales Data or Not Enough Sales Intelligence?:from 3forward by Dan Hudson
Your sales reps are continuously threatened with information overload.  Forget for a moment about the tidal wave of internal information they have to deal with on a daily basis and focus just on the information flows related to producing new revenues.  Think about it, we ask every rep to be an expert on the industry and markets they serve, their customer base, and the prospects in their sales pipeline. They could spend their entire day sifting through the mounds of information heaped on them without making a single sales call.

Getting the Most From Your Sales Team Investment

Sales people are very valuable commodities and best in class companies are realizing that sales reps don’t need more data; they need business intelligence that can be converted in to sales specific strategies and actions.
During March and April 2012 the Aberdeen Group conducted a study entitled “Sales Intelligence, What B2B Sellers Need to Know Before the Call”.  Aberdeen interviewed 215 end-user organizations regarding their sales effectiveness practices and more specifically on how sales intelligence is most effectively deployed.  Many of the respondents indicated that by empowering their sales team with the “right information” their ability to close more of the right kinds of business was greatly enhanced.

Business Intelligence for Increasing Sales Effectiveness

Sales reps have two missions in life, finding new prospects and filling their sales pipelines with deals. Effectively deployed sales intelligence solutions help accomplish this by identifying more targets and by indicating which of these targets have the highest likelihood of closing. Here are the top goals of sales intelligence deployments cited in the report.

Improve lead quality/quantity to increase selling time	62%
Improve reps knowledge of territory/industry/account for more educated consultative conversations	41%
Identify high value prospects through trigger events	25%
Automate the flow of externally sourced intelligence that is relevant to sales	22%

Clawing back non-selling time and improving the market relevance of your sales teams can be a game changer from a revenue growth perspective. Several of our upcoming blog posts will address actions and activities you can take to significantly improve the effectiveness of your sales team through the impmentation of sales intelligence tools and techniques. More to come – watch this space!