Sales Performance Management: Laggard or Leader?
Are you a sales leader or laggard? The answer lies in your approach to analytics.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is a famous quote attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle. There are many examples where we’ve seen this play out in real life.
An Olympic team from a small country of tight knit athletes who play together to outlast a bigger and better equipped team from a world power. The school who crushes their fundraising goals when they get nearly everyone in the school and the surrounding community to contribute to their cause.
In the corporate world this saying has a lot of meaning when you apply it to the Sales function. Sales success is contingent on contributions from the organization’s channels, products, geographical locations and sales teams. If you think about an individual sales representative or single product: it’s great if one performs well but at the enterprise level an organization will only meet their revenue and profitability goals if they get as many elements as possible “firing on all cylinders”.
We all know organizations have an enormous amount of data available to them. It’s clear that organizations who find the best way to aggregate and analyze their data will make more optimal sales decisions.
Leaders vs. Laggards
In a 2014 research report by Aberdeen Group, Sales Analytics: Data-driven forecasting for better quota attainment results found that 57% of revenue leaders had strong or pervasive use of sales analytics, compared with only 41% amongst revenue laggards. Organizations looking to build a more reliable, repeatable sales performance process should consider the following:
- Inaccurate sales forecasting is a major factor when targets are missed – Insufficient pipeline data entered by reps, and insufficient analytical capabilities within CRM platforms, are the two biggest causes of forecast inaccuracies and missed sales targets.
- Speed of decision-making drives sales performance – Leaders make fast, data-driven decisions based on a complete view of the prospect or customer. Timely and accurate decision-making provides the support for the deals, reps, and channels that need it most. In Aberdeen’s study, leaders rated their speed of decision-making capabilities to be 36% greater than laggards.
- Leaders use analytics pervasively – Leaders empower their sales reps with self-service analytics. The reps are able to identify territory and account trends, which increases call volume and quality, upping conversion rates and ultimately driving better sales productivity.
How do your sales analytics compare?
Take this brief assessment from Ventana Research to better understand your current sales analytics environment, and get recommendations on areas for improvement based upon years of benchmark research. It takes less than 10 minutes to get your results!
Many of the world’s leading organizations across a variety of industries use Qlik to drive sales performance, including Cisco, Bainbridge International, Andersen Corporation, Genyzme, Colonial Life, Canon India, Ted Baker, Greencore and more. Internally, Qlik uses QlikView and Qlik Sense to manage sales.
These organizations have realized first-hand the tight link between sales analytics and sales performance. Each are leveraging Qlik in a unique way to discover and make connections in their data and using those insights to improve sales performance.
To learn more about driving sales results with Qlik, visit www.qlik.com/salessolutions.
Find out which one you are by downloading this Sales Performance Infographic.
