Are you using Good Sales Data?

Sales data plays a fundamental role in every aspect of business. It steers decision making, helps you manage customer relationships and drives campaigns and productivity. One of the main functions of good sales data is to supply your sales teams with key information to drive productivity and allow them to focus on the right things. Put simply, good sales data leads to insight that drives strategy and results.

Prospecting is hard work. Over 40% of sales people say that it is the most challenging part of their job. In addition to that at least 50% of the average pipeline is normally a poor fit for most businesses.

That's exactly the reason the how and who you connect with to meet demanding sales targets and grow your business has never been more challenging. Relationships, value and demonstrable knowledge of your prospect, their needs and business, are what turns a deleted email into a warm conversation.

Ultimately everything leads back to good sales data. Not only must it be of the highest quality, it must also be relevant, accessible and tailored because your teams have enough to do, without regularly pouring over spreadsheets and reports for hours on end.

Sales leaders use data to track individual, team and company performance. This helps to progress towards your goal, retain focus, forecast, track return on investment and monitor sales commission, incentives and bonuses. It can also help you to spot potential issues and avoid them.

Salespeople use good sales data to identify prospects, patterns, industries and target markets. It is also imperative that good data is available to manage individual customer relationships and provide a tailored service around their needs. A high-performing sales person will often know how many deals they need in their pipeline, the revenue split and relevant buying stages at any one time in order to meet their revenue goals and conversion rates. It also helps them plan, review and monitor performance.

How you collect and distribute this data is of vital importance and will fuel results.

Sales Metrics
This can provide a wealth of knowledge, helping you understand your target audience and where to focus your efforts and overall performance:

• Closing rate
• Sale size
• Average sales cycle
• KPIs
• Pipeline
• Lead generation and productivity

Deal Metrics
Analysis of this will provide insight and can identify successful patterns and verticals for future prospecting:

• Who are your customers?
• Sales formula (number of leads v closed opportunities, plus average deal size)
• What do they purchase?
• What industry are they in?
• What is their job function?
• What need do you meet?
• Why do they buy from you?
• Where will you find them?

Business Metrics
This can provide quantifiable data to track, monitor and assess success or failure of the business strategy; use to track costs and communicate long and short-term objectives:

• Customer loyalty and retention
• Cost of acquisition
• Gross and net revenue
• Churn rate
• Monthly profit & loss

Capturing and analysing this data provides actionable intelligence and insight that will flourish your teams with quality prospects and allow them to focus on your target audience. Matching quality prospects that are the right fit for your business will mean that 50% of your pipeline isn’t wasting your time (and theirs). Your data drives leads and adjusts focus, overcoming one of the biggest selling challenges, namely prospecting.

Analysis of your target audience can be done retrospectively or proactively. Both are essential. The data is then used to identify future leads and prospects, identify hurdles and enable better planning. Rather than have your salespeople waste time and effort trawling LinkedIn or the internet for prospects, instead provide them with an online database where they can access pre-qualified, relevant data in a simplified way. Do this on their preferred device or system and you're much more likely to get them to use it. Data integration will assist with this, connecting all relevant departments to your CRM, customer base, leads, pipeline and those all-important metrics that drive knowledge and performance. To read more about data integration, please click here.

i-4business provide actionable, intelligent data and business solutions throughout Europe, the Middle-East and Africa. We do not sell or aggregate data. All of the i4b data is meticulously gathered in house by our team of researchers. Our comprehensive database becomes your database, nurturing your sales and marketing teams with every relevant organisation and contact as defined by you in your criteria. We guarantee complete coverage of EMEA, this is our core business and area of expertise for more than 25 years.

We offer customised integration with your CRM, to ensure a synchronised, continually up-to-date resource. In addition, we have a native Salesforce integration too. Reach your target audience like never before with targeted, tailored sales data; and best of all our solutions are GDPR compliant so you can grow your business with confidence.

We offer a 30-Day Free Account to provide you with zero cost access to our specialist EMEA database and enable you to evaluate our service for yourself.