Why robust data and analytics is essential to the success of your sales enablement tool

“Information is the oil of the 21st century and analytics is the combustion engine.” - Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President, Gartner Research.

Interactive digital sales tools provide all the content your sales team need to instantly tailor their conversations and easily demonstrate the benefits of your solutions, your capabilities and the value your business delivers.

In contrast to more traditional sales and marketing assets used in sales meetings – brochures, catalogues, linear presentations – interactive digital tools generate valuable data insights that enable you to derive real business value and make better business decisions.

Establishing what you want to measure is important in determining the success of your digital sales tool. This should be established at the beginning of the project, when you are agreeing on your objectives for the project.

 “We’ve seen really strong usage of our revenue enablement platform since it  launched. We’ve had over 250% growth in internal viewing of our marketing assets and over 300% growth in customer views and customer sharing of those assets.” - Dan Cheung, Wienerberger

 Analytics and the data generated can be useful for all aspects of the business, from Sales and Marketing, to Training, Finance, Operations and the all important RoI. The sales enablement tool will collect statistics and metrics, which in turn can help you to delve deeper when looking to obtain qualitative information from your teams and customers.  

 The benefits - what can be tracked, monitored and reported on

The Analytics tool that you choose to integrate with your sales experience will have an impact on the breadth and relevance of the data you can obtain. Analytics provide a statistical view of what the general trends are, insights into how particular groups are using the platform and can even spotlight an individual’s use and engagement.

I’ll introduce you to the options later in this blog, but firstly, here’s an idea of some of the information that your sales tool can equip you with and the benefits that this information can bring:

1.  Track and monitor customer and sales team engagement

Get a better understanding of how your sales team and prospects interact with your sales and marketing materials. Quantify which pieces of content are performing well and invest more in assets that impact revenue.

2.  Foster more collaboration between sales and marketing

Use metrics to see what marketing materials or sales content really work so you can take the guess work out of what is needed in the field. Use data insights to respond knowledgably to anecdotal feedback about what needs to be created or optimised to encourage engagement and drive conversions.

3.  Shorten the sales cycle

Monitor an individual prospect’s position in the sales funnel according to the types of content they’ve engaged with. Potentially shorten the sales cycle by reviewing and positioning the right content at the right time during subsequent conversations.

4.  React quickly to customer and market trends

Monitor which assets are increasing in engagement and, within our Agile development process, enhance the customer journey accordingly.

5.  Support training programmes and ongoing employee development

See who in your sales team is performing well and why – create training or coaching to help replicate those results across the board and create best-practice

6.  Continuous sales tool development to enhance your competitive edge

Your sales tool represents a long-term and continually developing project, based on quantitative and qualitative feedback, so that it can be refined and optimised to evolve with the businesses’ objectives by bringing new functionality and features on board.

7.  Drive and improve sales initiatives

Track and measure the RoI of your content and campaigns and use this information to respond quickly to optimise and update your content accordingly and report back to the rest of the business on success.

What Analytics tools are available?

There are a number of options for tracking data and analytics which can provide you with all the information you need – and more.  

However, there can be a downside if you are not focused on what you need to analyse and for what purpose. When an enormous amount of data is generated things can get complicated very quickly.

Additionally, how this data is structured can have a sizable effect on the ease of reporting and the value that this data generates.

The Analytics system required and the structure of your reports will depend on the KPIs that were determined at the outset of the project. Although, through an Agile development framework, these needs can be adjusted and enhanced to match your continually evolving needs.

Platform analytics

Enhanced sales enablement experiences can be developed as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), within platforms such as Showpad or Intuiface or using Prezi or PowerPoint. Depending upon which solution you arrive at, this will determine some of your options around collecting data from your tool.  

For example, if your sales enablement tool has been built in Showpad, which is a digital sales-enablement platform with a monthly licence fee, you will have access to the in-built analytics.

It is full of great features allowing businesses to:

• Access the most relevant and up-to-date marketing and sales collateral
• Track and manage accounts within their pipeline
• Track and report on relevant metrics from sales conversations etc. 

This may cover some of what you need insights into, but the analytics is standardised across the platform so has limited customisation.   

Free analytic tools

There are also free tools, such as Google Analytics, which currently provide basic tracking analytics around general trends and popular content. These can be integrated into your sales tool if built as a Progressive Web App (PWA). However, Google has announced plans to end third-party cookie tracking in 2022, due to privacy concerns around personal data.

Currently the option of using Google Analytics is cost effective if you only require general information that is not bespoke to your needs. It is also geared towards search-engine optimisation and e-commerce and can be a complex platform to learn and interpret and a lot of the data will be irrelevant to your purposes.

Dedicated analytics tool

With a bespoke analytics platform you can build monitoring and tracking around your business’s KPIs and create reporting through simple dashboards or more detailed reports, depending upon what your objectives are.

This approach will provide you with much more value than an off the shelf tool. As part of an Agile development process, it can be updated according to your campaign requirements or changing business objectives or market trends. How much you invest in this tool is dependent upon what your objectives are.

Qualitative feedback

Capturing feedback from your teams and customers is also very important and these conversations can often be sparked by quantitative data that is available.  

Speaking to the people using and experiencing the sales tool will provide an insight into the value gained and any suggested improvements or additions.

Data and privacy regulations

A note of caution here, whichever route you take you need to be very aware of the implications of GDPR and the impact of Brexit on the movement and storing of data. This is especially relevant if you collect personal data (such as a name and email address) and track an individual's interactions.

Any third-party analytics platforms should be very explicit about your responsibilities and theirs but you will also need to have your privacy policies up to date and any agency helping you with analytics should be knowledgeable of the privacy regulations – wherever the data is coming from e.g., if your sales tools are used globally then they’ll need to be aware of standards and regulations around the world.

Next steps

Digital sales tools provide you with robust data and business intelligence which can add real value to help you to fine tune your Sales and Marketing content, messaging and training - helping you to achieve your business goals and ultimately convert and close deals.

At POP our clients have come to us to help them capture their customers' attention, pique their curiosity and spark meaningful conversations. We create interactive sales tools that put their customers at the heart of the story, using visually engaging digital experiences to enable them to have more focused, profitable and customer-centric business conversations with customers.

We work with clients from a variety of different sectors, including Construction and the Built Environment, Manufacturing, FMCG, Healthcare, Technology and Museums. Clients include BMW, The Royal Mint, Barcardi, Bosch, Fujitsu, Coloplast, Arm, GSK, Laurus Homes and Wienerberger.

If you want to know how we can help your business or have any questions about capturing robust data using sales tools please email me or arrange an exploratory call on the number below.

Damjan Haylor