Why Data is So Important in Sales
John Crowley
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One of the coolest things about this week's podcast with Maurice Oswell was that he is the first person to touch on the importance of using data in sales.
Nowadays, it seems that you can’t scroll past two posts on LinkedIn without seeing something about big data or predictive analytics. This is not unwarranted. The advancement in our access to data and our abilities to data has fundamentally expanded our potentials in almost every single industry.
Sales is no exception. There is so much data available to help you be more successful, and most of your companies are providing it to you. The least you can do is learn to extract what you need from it to help make you successful.
So, in what ways can data analysis help to make you more successful? Below are three areas of data that you can either can track yourself, or use data from your company to help you start closing more deals:
- It can give you the status of the current market – There is easily accessible data all over the place, from bosses to a simple Google search that can tell you what people are buying in your current market and where most of the buying is going on. Use this data to make a more accurately targeted list of prospects and watch your commission check grow!
- It can give you insight to your product’s pricing – Are you competitive? Are you cheaper or more expensive than your competition? Analysis of this can help you to tailor your sales pitch in a way that will provide the most value to your customers.
- It can tell you your most effective sales activities – If I told you that you were twice as likely to set a sales appointment by sending an email at 9:30AM rather than 1:00PM, wouldn’t you send your emails at 9:30AM? Hell yes you would! Being able to effectively analyze data can help you determine what activities are generating the most commission for you, which I think we can all agree, is very valuable!
I feel the words data and analysis can really freak out salespeople. We tend to instantly shut it out, because we think that these types of fields are over our head.
Nowadays, this isn’t the case. You don’t need to be a data scientist to extract valuable information from easily accessible data. You just need to read.
This coming week, find a piece of data that will help you become better at your job. Start with something like your call to appointment ratio. How many phone calls do you have to make to set an appointment? How many appointments are you trying to set per week?
Once you’ve answered these questions and filled in the missing data points, you will be able to set a much clearer goal and you will have a much clearer view of your road to success.
Want more? Check out my website.