While the roughly 1.8 million B2B salespeople in the United States are the lifeblood of their companies, many don’t utilize available technologies to develop optimal sales strategies. CRM and sales performance management tools take much of the pain out of tracking deal flow and managing commissions. However, they mostly provide a historical record of past events rather than a look into the future. To become more strategic, the sales technology of the future will need to provide better guidance and intelligence through the use of Big Data and predictive analytics.
Many perceive the analysis of terabytes of data as insurmountably complicated. While still certainly an impressive technological feat, recent advances moved it out of the realm of theory into an operational reality for early-adaptors. While I do not intend to oversimplify data analysis, I do believe that automation has the power to bring these capabilities to the masses. For years, gleaning real insight from Big Data was only possible for the largest enterprises with large budgets and the foresight to hire a team of data scientists. Now, technologies are coming to market that use algorithms and machine-driven pattern recognition to perform the role once occupied by these expensive data scientists. This means that many more companies will now be able to mine data to predict customer behavior, determine the ideal market basket and help salespeople close deals as profitably as possible. This means arming sales teams with concrete data and facts to ensure they can anticipate and respond to buyer needs and do not leave money on the table.
Conventional wisdom says that selling is a delicate dance that relies on instinct and tenacity. But as technology evolves, so does every single industry it touches. Big Data and analytics in the sales process dovetail perfectly with the tenacity and instincts already possessed by most sales people, helping them maximum their effectiveness and meet their quotas. The opportunity provides salespeople with a level of insight and guidance that was unthinkable just a few years ago, such as which deals are most likely to close in any given month, what the winning price is for a given product, and which customers are most likely to defect.
In today’s hyper-connected world, the worst thing a sales person say to a potential customer, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” It is now more vital than ever to have insight and guidance when in front of a customer. Thanks to the proliferation of Big Data analytics and recent advances in automation, its application in sales is beginning to bear fruit at forward thinking organizations. Those companies that choose to ignore this trend do so at their own risk.