Big data. It’s everywhere. Scrolling through emails each morning, it can be difficult to ignore the slew of promotional content. All of which are relevant and personalized to you, thanks to data. It’s hard to avoid Spotify’s song recommendations during your workout, all of which are based on your recently played list. You can thank data for the recommended-turned-new-favorite song.
Source: Statista
Data makes our personal lives easier, but what about our business practices? That is essential – and it’s why big data revenue, worldwide, continues to and is projected to grow substantially. However, a recent CIO Insight report found that 40% of companies show disseminated information and restricted visibility into data negatively impacts their sales organization. In fact, 56% of sellers are dissatisfied with their ability to provide helpful, data-driven insights.
Neglecting to capture and utilize data to improve sales and marketing strategies is a huge disservice. You are likely missing out on a lot of revenue, too. The good news is it’s not too late to fix this issue. Using data to drive your sales enablement efforts is the key to success.
What is Data-Driven Sales Enablement?
Data-driven sales enablement ensures your business has the information it needs to understand and improve sales performance.
Matthew Cook, from Databox, states “As data continues to power nearly every aspect of business functions, it’s also become an indispensable asset when it comes to sales. With data comes knowledge–knowledge that can be used to better inform sales reps, improve the sales process, and help sales managers better allocate their time… Companies that actively use data show 50% higher revenue growth than companies that don’t.”
It should be noted the right data must be collected. This ensures your sellers can have insightful sales discussions and support their interactions with proven collateral to help win deals. This article will explore the three types of data your business should be using.
3 types of data needed to make the biggest impact:
How your content is being utilized by sales and consumed by prospects
SiriusDecisions believes enterprise organizations lose over $2.3M every year due to costs associated with unused or underused marketing content. Simply because your marketing department is producing content doesn’t mean your sellers are using it.
Avoid wasting marketing spend and implement sales enablement technology that allows you to track and measure what content is being used to close deals. This data can also track whether or not the content is resonating with buyers. This ensures you are putting revenue generating content in the hands of your sales team.
The information gathered in this category is invaluable. Understanding if and how your sales team is using specific marketing assets, and how your prospects interact with them, is critical.
How is your content performing
Source: Everstring
Most marketers likely have no idea whether or not their content is directly contributing to revenue. If you are collecting the data on the ROI of your content, you probably know what content is being put in front of buyers and if they are engaging with it or not.
However, do you know if that content is actually helping your sales team move deals toward a close?
Using AI-powered sales enablement technology integrated with CRM, allows you to just that. Quantifying and improving the return on your investment of sales content can be performed by tying specific assets back to revenue. Creating visual dashboards featuring actionable insights such as archive, promote, or review can improve performance in a strategic way.
Source: Everstring
How you can gather buyer-specific insights that move deals forward
Data that assists your buyers in justifying the purchase of your product or service is just as important as data that helps inform your sales process and strategies. Today’s buyers want to be sold solutions to their problems, not just products. If they cannot find a solution to their problems, they abandon a purchase entirely. Adopting a sales enablement technology allows you to incorporate customer-specific, third party data from providers like Nielsen, into real-time sales interactions. Doing so builds credibility and influences buyers instantaneously in the sales process.
Utilizing interactive value selling tools like TCO and ROI calculators to gain data from the buyer and outputs to tell a story around the cost and benefits of using your product vs. competitors helps the sales team to quantify and communicate the value of your product in the context of the buyer’s business effectively. This makes it much easier for the buyer to justify the purchase to stakeholders, shortening the cycle.
Data is beneficial. It provides benefits to us both personally and professionally. By using these three types of data your business will see sales and revenue increase, and deals close faster, allowing you to see the true benefits of data-driven sales enablement.
About the Author: Carson Conant is the CEO and Founder of Chicago-based sales enablement solution provider Mediafly. Having grown up in an entrepreneurial family, Carson is no stranger to the challenges and rewards of building a company from the ground up and assembling a brilliant team to successfully execute on his vision. Under Carson’s leadership, Mediafly has been recognized as an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company for five consecutive years, one of Inc.’s Best Workplaces of 2018, and a Best Place to Work by Crain’s Chicago Business. Mediafly’s software is currently leveraged by top Fortune 500 companies including PepsiCo, MillerCoors, Disney, and Goldman Sachs.