There are dozens of growth strategies for businesses and their sales teams to choose between, and while choice is a luxury, many companies would prefer concrete data to inform their efforts toward success.
Rather than continuing to make uninformed sales decisions, a data-driven approach can significantly boost sales performance and client satisfaction with reasoning to back it up. Using data to drive success in sales transforms your company’s isolated data systems into strategic assets for enhanced sales strategies and performance.
What is data-driven sales enablement? Simply put, it is a method of sales planning and implementation that relies on quality customer data for highly tailored targeting at every step of the sales cycle.
Data-driven sales enablement is not only useful for companies to understand their customers and the competitive landscape, but it is also increasingly becoming a non-negotiable aspect of successful sales strategies.
A thorough data enablement strategy and a strong data foundation empower companies to understand customer needs, behaviors, and preferences, informing more targeted outreach and optimizing sales approaches and tactics. If you are just beginning your data-enablement journey, starting with the basics will help ensure sustained success as your data capabilities grow in the future.
Regardless of your organization’s size or industry, sales enablement analytics can produce several significant benefits:
Sales enablement analytics can provide a deeper understanding of customer behaviors, preferences, and trends, creating a comprehensive 360-degree view of your clients. Data provides a unique understanding of the customer base, enabling organizations to reach and serve their target customers through tailored sales approaches, impactful marketing, and customer-specific solutions.
Rather than spending weeks, months, or even years testing sales strategies based on theories of what might work, companies can leverage effective sales tactics and channels with specificity. These tactics include optimizing lead generation and conversion processes by efficiently identifying and filling gaps in the process and allocating resources optimally. What results is every company’s goal – higher seller productivity and reduced operational costs.
The plight of most sales teams is endless decision-making that may not yield satisfactory or desired results. Access to real-time data and analytics equips sales teams and leaders to make informed decisions quickly and effectively without as much gray area. As your competitive advantage rises due to increased responsiveness to market changes and customer needs, those sales decisions won’t feel quite so cumbersome and opaque.
Customer data equips sales teams to engage in intentional, human-centric, tailored interactions. This personalization produces offerings in more direct alignment with customer needs. The result is customers who feel seen and heard, higher conversion rates, and improved customer loyalty.
If this hyper-personalization sounds a bit over the top, we encourage you to think again. Buyers are drastically different today than they were twenty or even five years ago – with prevalent access to information, consumers spend more time researching their needs and buying options than ever before. Personalizing and streamlining the sales process is no longer a nice-to-have, but necessary for success.
With a sound data enablement strategy, organizations can not only use data to understand what customers care about, but can also forecast future trends and customer behaviors, allowing them to proactively adjust strategies and stay ahead of market demands and competition.
Scaling for growth shouldn’t involve guesswork, it should involve actionable insights based on expanding data sets that allow growth without excessive risk.
Data-driven approaches provide the framework to scale your sales operations effectively, ensuring that strategies and processes evolve based on how you need to grow. In other words, a data-driven approach helps your company scale sales operations with confidence.
We know the incredible benefits of a data-driven sales strategy – but what about the challenges? Oil is known as the most valuable resource across the globe, but many now say that data is the new oil. Data and oil share qualities as powerful tools that can create great success, but both require intentional strategies for effective use. Some of the biggest hurdles surrounding data-driven sales are:
Incomplete, inaccurate, or outdated data contributes to misleading sales insights and poorly informed decision-making. The solution to this challenge is to protect data integrity through enhanced data management and governance mechanisms. Developing a right-sized governance framework will help your team effectively manage your data lifecycle in every area, for improved sales strategies and reduced confusion.
Siloed data is a major issue for most organizations. Large amounts of data are often collected across different departments and systems with little to no integration. This fragmentation can hinder the comprehensive analysis necessary for effective data-driven sales enablement because of an incomplete view of customer interactions and preferences. Breaking down these silos is a complex task, but skilled data experts can implement solutions for seamless data access across platforms.
Both existing and legacy systems can pose challenges as you optimize your data for successful sales efforts. Data needs to flow seamlessly across platforms for sales teams to take action on real-time insights, but integrating new data sources with existing business systems and processes can be technically challenging.
Many organizations lack the necessary resources to effectively analyze and interpret complex data sets. Support from a partner like Kenway is one of the most effective solutions for educating and empowering your employees. This intentional enablement helps teams better utilize data-driven insights in their sales and marketing efforts, and empowers teams to take ownership of these responsibilities for increased self-service opportunities.
Increasing regulatory requirements and rising concerns about data privacy mean businesses walk a fine line between using sales enablement analytics and navigating the legal implications of working with customer data (i.e., GDPR, CCPA, or CPRA). Ensuring compliance while still gaining valuable insights from data is a significant but necessary hurdle to overcome.
Arguably, the most significant challenge to overcome when adopting a data enablement strategy is the change management required for your people and processes. Effective change management strategies are needed to align all stakeholders with the new data-centric approach so that every team member is set up for success from day one.
There is a lot to consider for your business as you implement data-driven sales enablement. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by legacy systems, change management, and the influx of data you need to gather and interpret, focus on measurable steps that can drive change for more successful sales efforts in your company.
Kenway's top tips for integrating data effectively from your tech platforms to your company’s sales processes are:
Gather data from various sources, including CRM systems, customer feedback platforms, social media, market research, website analytics, transactional data, third-party data, and sales outcomes. This data should then be integrated into one unified platform for a comprehensive view of customer behaviors and sales trends.
Now that your data is in one place, it needs to be analyzed. Paint a 360-degree view of your unique customers through data analysis. This step involves identifying patterns, trends, and insights that can inform strategic decisions in sales planning and execution.
Based on data analysis and the insights gleaned, it's time to put those learnings to work. Develop targeted sales strategies to address customer needs, market opportunities, and areas for improvement.
Now it's time to deploy technologies that support your new sales strategy and enable your people. This could include CRM software, data analytics and visualization platforms, and automated marketing tools.
Use the previous steps to arm your sales teams with the necessary training to understand and utilize your data insights effectively. Educate your teams on the tools and techniques needed for data analysis, as well as best practices for applying those data-driven insights in their various sales pursuits.
Once data is integrated, insights are generated, strategies are developed, technology is enabled, and teams have been trained, continuous monitoring is the next step. Evaluate the performance of sales strategies and make adjustments based on newly generated data. Continuous evaluation informs and refines your sales approach so that sales efforts remain aligned with your overarching business objectives.
Kenway is not a sales consulting company, but we do help companies build successful sales enablement strategies through a foundation of strong data. Data governance and Salesforce platform optimization are two areas that many companies struggle with. Kenway is poised to help your organization alleviate these pain points so you can get on the path toward stronger data-driven sales strategies.
Optimized processes and management go hand in hand with data-driven sales initiatives. Salesforce Sales Cloud features a variety of powerful tools designed to enhance sales processes, including centralized customer information, automated sales processes, performance metrics and reporting, scalability, seamless integration, mobile data access, and lead management. This list is just a sample of how Kenway’s Salesforce consulting enables sales teams to experience success.
Two examples illustrate the impact of Sales Cloud and Kenway Consulting:
1. A national enterprise using Salesforce achieved a deeper understanding of buyer behavior by capturing data in their Sales Cloud instance. This led to reduced deal times, increased efficiency, and improved customer satisfaction.
2. A small manufacturing customer wanted to limit their sales team’s access to their back-end financials while consolidating activities. The result was a 40% improvement in their sales process by automating redundant tasks, consolidating account sales access, and providing executive access to troubled areas or personnel.
Data-driven sales enablement and data governance both aim to maximize the value and integrity of data within an organization. They complement each other through:
Data governance ensures that data is accurate, consistent, and reliable across the organization. This foundational aspect is essential for effective data-driven sales enablement, as high-quality data is necessary to derive meaningful insights and make informed decisions. By establishing data governance policies and processes, organizations can maintain data integrity, which in turn supports successful sales strategies.
Data governance frameworks include measures to ensure compliance with regulations and industry standards around data handling and privacy controls. By adhering to these standards, organizations mitigate the risk of data breaches, safeguarding customer trust and the company’s reputation. This alignment with data governance objectives empowers sales teams to deliver personalized experiences and drive sales without fear of data privacy or security breaches.
The end goal of using data as a business tool is aligning data initiatives with broader business objectives. Proper data governance will strategically align data with sales enablement goals, such as achieving specific sales targets, enhancing customer satisfaction, and driving overall business growth. By integrating data governance principles into sales enablement strategies, organizations can optimize their sales processes and achieve their desired outcomes.
When implementing a data enablement strategy for sales, your organization has many options to choose from. At Kenway, we appreciate the value of technical tools and proven processes, but we also recognize that the people within your company play a crucial role in shaping effective data management in sales.
The Kenway method focuses on people first, processes second, and then technology. This means that while the solutions proposed in this blog are helpful, evaluating your company culture and the needs of your sales team is equally important.
Our consultants have a keen eye for understanding how to implement data solutions with a human approach, and we would love to help you on your data-driven sales enablement journey. Connect with a consultant today to learn more.
