Self-management of data increases sales performance

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This is according to a study carried out by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and commissioned by Qlik , in which 80% of companies also stated that sales management performance is more important than other key objectives.

Greater access to data, frequent use of analytical tools and the use of data at the highest levels of the organisation all contribute to improved sales performance, were other findings from the global study conducted by the EIU and Qlik.

According to the study, virtually all companies (97%) that reported being very good at executing sales targets process information in real time and have self-service access to customer or account data. Of these, three in five said they access sales reports one or more times per day.

The report, which surveyed 550 global sales leaders, confirms that benin phone number lead efficient sales management is a nearly universal priority for businesses. 79% of them indicated that managing sales efficiently is “somewhat important” or “much more important” than other business objectives. At the same time, only a quarter of respondents said they were very good at executing sales objectives: insufficient or poor quality data was one of the main barriers to improved sales performance.

“The companies that succeed are not the ones that have the most data, but the ones that really understand it and know what to do with it ,” said Colin Day, Global Head of Marketing Operations at SunGard.

Other key aspects of the study include:
Business data accuracy and integration: Data accuracy (53%) and the analytics platform’s ability to integrate with existing systems (38%) were the most important features for sales data analytics applications to have. However, these were also the most commonly cited limitations of their current systems, cited by more than 30 percent of respondents.

Sales-leading companies have their C-suite involved in analytics: About one-third of companies that said they were “very good” at executing sales goals also reported that sales analytics data was widely used by their C-suite, versus 19 percent of other companies.

Investments in training and coaching, and empowering the sales force through the use of data tools, yield measurable returns: Sales leaders were more likely to see themselves as stronger than their competition in terms of revenue growth, profitability, and market share. For example, 42% of companies that said they were “very good” at executing sales targets said they were much stronger than their competitors in terms of revenue growth, versus 11% of other companies.

Leading companies are paving the way for their workforce to benefit from sales data analysis: around three in five companies acknowledged that their sales staff had the skills to take advantage of analytics. These companies recognize that success depends largely on efforts to raise awareness among their workforce about the potential of data, and to train staff on best practices related to the topic.

Learn more about this study by downloading it here , and find out more about the cases and resources consulted.