Getting actionable insights from your Sales & Marketing data often seems like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The promise is immense, but you just can’t seem to get there. And there is one main difference. This pot of gold is real.
Yes, your organization has tons of data. Check.
It has invested heavily in getting people to follow one way of working in an integrated system. Check.
In almost every strategy deck of your organization the word ‘data-driven’ pops up. Check.
You know what is being said “No great marketing decisions have ever been made on qualitative data.” – John Sculley”. So you are fully convinced that you need to factualize things to make better decisions. Check.
So the sky is the limit, right? You have all you need in order to better understand your customers and make better decisions than your competitors.
Yet it was not so long ago that a Gartner survey reported that 87% of organizations were classified as having low BI and analytics maturity. Are you really reaping the benefits?
Zooming in on Sales & Marketing
What is also at play is that traditionally ‘working with numbers’ fits a range of business functions like a jacket. But the Sales and Marketing functions are not widely known to be populated by large groups of data lovers. In fact, it still remains true that the departments driving the most BI adoption are Operations and Finance. This does not seem to be in sync with where the value potential lies. Research shows that if we look at revenue increases from AI adoption, then Sales & Marketing is amongst the top performing functions overall.
That is why we are providing you with 5 signs that indicate you are not yet reaping the full benefits of the advances in data & analytics within Marketing & Sales. Be encouraged to look for ‘hidden treasures’ if in your organization:
- The information on basis of which sales managers start their day and do their weekly review is fully free format
One of the most fundamental value drivers for the Sales function is an effective performance dialogue. And even though every organization can benefit from this, it does not appear to be that obvious on how to get it right. What is the first most crucial role Data & Analytics can play in this performance dialogue? Exactly.. having everyone to look at the same numbers and have the same starting point to start this dialogue.
- There is a gut feeling towards which channels and campaigns generate your most valuable leads
Kudos if this gut feeling has brought you success in the past. Your organization seems to have great knowledge of your business and customers. But things change rapidly. And if used correctly, the technological advances of today should allow every organization to have insight into what drives conversion. That is fierce competition for the gut to keep up with.
- The conversations with sales reps on data are all about why CRM does not reflect reality
Number 3 is probably keeping you up at night. Because if you’re not going to trust your CRM data: why did you implement a CRM system in the first place and what will you base your decisions on? Will you be interviewing your sales reps for every single decision to make to understand what is going on? You should definitely complement your perspective with listening carefully to your sales reps but do you only want to be dependent on their qualitative feedback?
A conversation on data is always good, even if as a starting point the conversation is on why data quality is low. But the conversation needs to evolve to something more insightful.
- There is a department that delivers basic reports to sales management & marketeers on request
It is very wise to give your sales management & marketeers support to get relevant insights with some ‘analyst’ brainpower. But would you not want to focus that support on getting to the bottom of things?
Even more so, if there is a dependency on a separate department to get the most basic insights it also means that these insights will often not be used in day-to-day operations. A decision is to be made now and there is no time to wait for someone else to work away their queue of report requests. So the gut feeling prevails…
A ‘baseline’ of insights should be at the fingertips of your sales management & marketeers. And they need to know how to use and interpret these insights without any help.
- Choosing what leads and opportunities to pursue first is being done manually
Welcome into the world of AI. AI is not only for tech companies, nor is it a long-term vision. It is happening now, and it is happening fast. One of the most promising use cases for Sales is to get a helping hand from AI in qualifying leads and prioritizing opportunities.
It does not mean that your Sales teams can stop thinking themselves and are becoming ‘Sales Robots’. On the contrary. It will allow them to focus their time on the most valuable human interaction to advance or kill prioritized opportunities as soon as possible.
And now what?
Do you recognize one or more of these signals at your organization? Congratulations, that’s good news! There is untapped value potential meaning you can improve. Awareness is step 1, but for step 2 you need to understand the root cause.
And that’s what we will focus on in our next blog. We will dive deeper into one of these signals to understand what is blocking you from tapping into your full value potential and how you can fix this. Stay tuned!
