Sale intelligence is critical in sales. In fact, we always recommend gathering intel every time—and specifically before—you reach out to any prospect.
What is sales intelligence? Sales intelligence is technologies, insights, analyses, and practices that provide salespeople and sales organizations with data (intelligence) so they can:
- stay up-to-date and informed on prospects, clients, competitors, and the industry;
- boost their productivity;
- get better at decision-making;
- improve sales process with better follow-ups and faster lead-to-close times;
- identify new and quality leads;
- and, ultimately, win more deals
It’s important that businesses have programs within their companies that formalize and strategize the process of gathering sales intelligence. To be effective, such program should include these three characteristics:
1. Disparate sets of data that provide meaningful insights, which drive better decision-making
2. The program should show the disciplined collection of data and the application of analysis
3. Reliable, consistent measurement and reporting are a must—they are the foundations of a sales intelligence program
It’s obvious that data and reporting play a crucial role. This is so, as previously noted, you can generate the actionable insights you need for prospecting, qualifying, selling, nurturing a lead, negotiating, and closing a deal.
Sales organizations stand to benefit a lot from establishing an efficient sales intelligence program. A CRM is your best arsenal for gathering and generating insights—and for building and establishing your sales intelligence program.
But not just any CRM will do. You need to look at what a CRM can offer so you can gather the data and create the reports you need. Two things you should consider: the CRM’s ability to provide extensive analytics and customization. You need to consider features that implement these:
- Intelligent forecasting with timely and intelligent data so you can make better business decisions
- Custom reporting that removes the clutter (i.e. the information you don’t need) so the sales intelligence gathering process is more efficient. This also reduces the paperwork and files involved (goodbye, complex Excel sheets!) since everything you really need is in the report
- A dashboard that gives you an overview of the data, reports, and metrics you need to prioritize. A CRM must have a collection of widgets that allow you to fully customize your dashboard according to how you want it to function for you, your business, and your sales goals
- Custom metrics so you can monitor the data you need for a highly functioning sales team and a healthy, thriving pipeline. There are various sales metrics you can consider for implementation.
- Custom dimensions and values that allow you to customize all the reports you need for data analysis. You should also be able to allow for filters that help narrow down data in your reports to achieve a more accurate reporting
- Real-time reporting that allows you to act on issues, concerns, problems, opportunities when it matters the most
- Bespoke modules that accommodate your daily activities and sales process—so your business can operate as efficiently and effectively as possible
You need a highly efficient and intelligent CRM if you want your sales intelligence program to produce the results you need.
Now that you have your tool, what kind of intelligence do you need to gather and generate? A comprehensive sales intelligence program has these three main elements:
1. Operational Intelligence
You generate operational intelligence by tracking events of the past and the present. It is “focused on generating the KPIs that sales leaders, managers and reps use to manage and track their day-to-day activities, output and progress toward sales goals.”
You generate operational intelligence by tracking events of the past and the present. It is “focused on generating the KPIs that sales leaders, managers and reps use to manage and track their day-to-day activities, output and progress toward sales goals.”
What are these KPIs? These can include the “number of sales calls, sales meetings and opportunities; pipeline-to-quota coverage ratios, performance against plan and forecast, win rates, pipeline velocity, average deal size, and other metrics that help monitor sales performance.”
How do you measure these? Sales metrics and reports. It’s always best to start off your sales process with sales metrics that you want to measure and monitor to see how the team and the pipeline are doing.
2. Diagnostic Intelligence
Diagnostic intelligence “takes the foundational elements of operational intelligence and layers on analysis, trending, and visualization to deliver a more meaningful view of data.”
Diagnostic intelligence “takes the foundational elements of operational intelligence and layers on analysis, trending, and visualization to deliver a more meaningful view of data.”
Based on the operational intelligence (events of the past and the present), you can diagnose the events of the future. Diagnostic intelligence is “focused on identifying characteristics, conditions, correlations and trends. Diagnostic analysis often involves investigation of historical data, root cause analysis, integration of data from multiple sources, and advanced analytics techniques.”
3. Interpretive Sales Intelligence
Interpretive sales intelligence “leverages diagnostic capabilities to explain the meaning of something, then delivers recommendations and guidance on how to adjust tactics, strategy, and plans. It is often applied to big-picture activities such as assessing each year’s go-to-market model, financial plan, quotas and compensation plans.”
Interpretive sales intelligence “leverages diagnostic capabilities to explain the meaning of something, then delivers recommendations and guidance on how to adjust tactics, strategy, and plans. It is often applied to big-picture activities such as assessing each year’s go-to-market model, financial plan, quotas and compensation plans.”
Everyone on the team can benefit from interpretive sales intelligence. Use it to help inform your next steps when trying to negotiate and close a deal. Sales managers can strategize on sales enablement, sales processes and systems, and more using interpretive sales intelligence.
Implementing sales intelligence is technical and methodical, and it can take up time and resources. But the results are definitely worth it.
This list should get you started on building your own sales intelligence system/program. As a bonus, here’s an infographic (you can download the PDF here) on other things you need to know about sales intelligence—and how it can help your team win more deals.
Photo from Pexels. Main photo by Kaboompics.com
