How to Use Sales Analytics to Boost Your Pipeline

Having a clear understanding of your sales processes and having a clear plan are essential to succeeding in the world of sales.

Going about it blindly may work when you start out, but if you want to continue your success and grow further, you need to understand what you are doing. And then how to replicate success over and over again in various verticals and markets.

You need to know how to make use of sales analytics to boost your pipeline.

Let's begin with a definition.

Sales analytics refers to whatever process you and your business are using to understand your company and market.

By identifying, modeling, and understanding your industry, you are able to then predict sales trends and results. Based on your findings, you can then locate the improvement points in your existing sales process to further encourage and assure yourself of growth.

Understanding sales analytics is key for company sales forecasting.

The data studied comes from a variety of company pipelines and sources, including all business transactions, surveys, and internal applications. This process has been recognized as so vital that there are entire sub-departments in large companies dedicated to analyzing this data to predict trends.

And it is based on these predictions that companies will then make decisions regarding budget and sales or marketing plans and campaigns.

These sub-departments are focused on finding hidden relationships and trends within the data they mine that will provide support to the sales and marketing folks in the company. The goal is to forecast consumer wants and needs, even before they know they have them, and act accordingly.

Additionally, these sub-departments will often be the ones finding new opportunities for companies to act on and providing them with information to act on these opportunities before their competitors. Anything from a new vertical to a different marketing angle and strategy to help differentiate themselves from the competition.

How do such analytic studies play out in real life?

In the world of supply chain management, PepsiCo makes use of its distributor's and client reports to replenish their shelves in a timely manner based on consumer demand.

Streaming giant Netflix uses the data of users and what they watch to offer recommendations and numerical percentages in the form of a 'match'.

And governments around the world realize the growing trend of remote work and digital nomadism could be a boon for them. Numbers don't lie and combined with the revenue these folks may bring into their countries, more and more countries are now offering digital nomad visas.

But how does this work in the world of sales?

The sales analytics process is made up of four steps we'll be going over:

Just as when you build your Go-To-Market Strategy, you need to focus early on.

Decide what aspects of your sales process you want to study, some options include:

• The results and the average length of your sales training
• How much time SDRs dedicate to outbound vs inbound approaches
• Is there a point where you continuously lose contact with potential customers

The aspect you focus on typically has an issue you are searching for a solution to. Let's utilize the last bullet point.

The problem seems to be that conversations are going well with potential customers until a certain point, resulting in lost revenue and sales opportunities. This has been happening continuously with certain clients for months now. You might posit that it is related to the price you offer, so your solution is to change up your ICP to reflect a higher budget from your prospects.

Now you want to test this theory.

To test your theory, you want to collect the right sales metrics. There are many sales metrics out there. We won't go over all of them here, but a few you might want to always keep track of are:

You want to grow as a company, so anything that seems to be slowing down is important to investigate and keep track of. As in the example we're studying, it's a first alarm bell.

Making a monthly target and having one is useful to have a goal for everyone in the sales department to aim towards. If for any reason, this target starts being missed continually, it's time to take a closer look.

Sales analytics is about identifying trends, so keeping track of historical data and sales is extremely useful for these sub-departments dedicated to analysis.

For our example, an absolutely key metric. Lead conversion rates allow you to isolate problems and continuously optimize the customer experience for both sales and marketing teams. This leads to better customer acquisition, retention, and experience.

Especially useful for the PepsiCo example seen previously and for anyone selling physical goods, it's a great metric for supply chain inventory needs and forecasting.

Similar to Lead conversion Rate, this metric is extremely useful for our example. It shows you how good your team is at closing deals. If it starts falling, you can note that something is going wrong with either the quality of your leads or the sales process.

There are many more metrics to keep track of and in mind so that your analytics teams can get a bigger picture, but for the potential clients that are disappearing example we are focusing on, the above are enough.

In that example, you want to focus on quote-to-close and lead conversion rates to see if your proposed solution would be the right fit. And on sales growth, sales target, and sales to date to first identify that you have a problem.

But how do you keep track of all these metrics and find them?

With the right toolset, of course.

Having determined your metrics, you now want to make use of sales analytics tools to see if you are correct in your hypothesis and solution suggestion. Sales analytics tools utilize the power of AI to make the job of your analysts a lot easier.

These tools automatically gather all sorts of sales data and transform it into the metrics we outlined above. These metrics are then synthesized into reports and visualizations that make it easier for you and your analysts to understand and quickly identify spots for improvement.

Your sales process thus becomes optimized, your customer service is improved, and you can forecast trends thanks to such tools, keeping an eye on important metrics for you.

But there are so many tools out there, how do you choose the right one?

Well, we've got some favorites you might want to start out with.

HubSpot, a leader in CRM software, offers Sales Hub: a large suite of sales analytics resources to help you create your reports. Tracking deal forecasts, sales performance reports, and logging productivity are all possible.

And best of all? It's easy to use.

With a straightforward interface, multiple dashboards customized to your preferences to provide visibility into all your sales reports are easily accessed by users.

Additionally, it is perfectly collaborative and thus serviceable to larger teams, allowing you to create different access privileges for certain dashboards.

In its initial package, the software is free, though to access many of its additional features you do need to pay.

Another giant in the business of sales and marketing, Salesforce Sales Cloud aims to boost productivity with this automated sales analytics tool.

With a data-driven approach, the goal is to grow and strengthen relationships thanks to the information provided each step of the way. With access to reports and its unique forecasting software, Salesforce is always a safe bet.

And they offer a one-month free trial to start you off!

Gong's Revenue Intelligence Platform, patented as such, focuses on customer interactions when it comes to its analyses.

Providing users with insights based upon those interactions, the tool takes this data and is able to determine the next steps for revenue and go-to-market teams to implement. This in turn results in users ensuring continuous growth and improvement to their offer, thanks to what their current customers think.

Developed in 2013 and already in use in various companies, including Adobe and Zoom, Clari boasts a revenue platform focused on providing users with complete visibility and insight into their business.

The goal is to focus on the entire revenue process by aligning buyers and sellers, helping spot risk and opportunities throughout the pipeline, increasing the accuracy of forecasts, and improving overall company efficiency and performance.

Easily integrated with a variety of other services, including HubSpot, Google Cloud, and Excel, Zoho Analytics produces easily understood data visualizations of all your metrics.

The amount of raw data the platform can adapt to is impressive, and the reports that come from its software remain easily understood and straightforward. With this tool, it is easy to find improvement spots and determine the actions to apply.

With pricing that works for businesses of all sizes, Zoho Analytics is one to try out for sleek and easily understandable visualizations.

Finally, the last step of the sales analytics process is to implement your findings based on the reports above.

In the case of the example we've been using, you would be revisiting the ICP you've determined with your team.

It's a question of whether you want to lower your price point or come up with an alternative offer for these prospects that stop responding once you begin conversing price but otherwise fit the ICP. Or double down and increase the budget companies you prospect for should have.

Your reports will be able to guide you in the right direction.

If you are continuously closing business with companies that have a higher budget, then that is clearly the route to take. But if you find that you are not closing enough with those companies, it might be time to consider diversifying your offer to include those that need a lower price point.

Perhaps a subscription model that is renewed monthly, so smaller companies can work it into their budget as it grows, a free trial or a partial service is the way to go.

Your analytics will be able to tell you, and you can then apply those findings to the solution you use.

Sales analytics are a necessity, not a suggestion.

Without keeping track of them and knowing where you are succeeding or failing, you will be unable to grow correctly. You'll lose out on opportunities for expansion and fail to account for spots that require improvement.

Always make sure you're keeping track of your metrics and utilizing them when it's time to make changes.

You don't want to get left behind.