Three Ways Predictive Analytics Evolve Your Sales Process
By Miller Heiman Group
Buyer behaviors have undergone massive changes over the past year, forcing sales organizations to evolve their processes to meet new demands and overcome new challenges. Analytics have emerged as a key component of success, yet according to our 2019 World-Class Sales Practices Report, only 23% of organizations globally use sales analytics to measure and predict sales performance. When sales leaders use predictive analytics paired with a CRM, they’re more likely to guide sellers to success.
When sellers struggle to uncover the right buying influences, predictive analytics can show the stage your top sellers gathered that information and the strategies that helped them do so. But these kinds of insights are only as reliable as the quality of your data, which requires all sellers, even your top performers, to input accurate information into your CRM.
Let’s explore techniques for using predictive analytics with your sales team.
Get Sellers Buy-In
According to our 2nd Annual Sales Operations & Technology Study, most companies use some type of CRM platform, although a small percentage of companies still rely on spreadsheets instead. Yet only 26% of companies agreed that they have a sufficient set of tools to supplement CRM and support sales.
These companies, whether they have a low adoption rate or still rely on spreadsheets, miss the opportunity to leverage their data for actionable insights to improve seller performance.
Securing buy-in from your sales reps to invest in keeping your CRM up-to-date can be challenging, as they may see it as an administrative task that pulls them away from selling. But if you show how applying predictive analytics to CRM data can improve their win rates, they’ll see the value in making this investment. With precise information, sellers can more easily identify the actions that led to successful outcomes. This information allows sellers to successfully repeat certain behaviors, such as:
- Identifying the internal coach at the right time.
- Identifying the anti-sponsor earlier in the customer’s path.
- Uncovering hidden stakeholders.
Predictive analytics also allows one-on-ones with sellers become more efficient. Instead of reviewing data points that should already be in the CRM platform, you’re able to immediately focus on the specifics of each opportunity. This allows you to coach the seller on techniques that have worked for other sellers with similar opportunities.
Why Predictive Analytics Matter
Once you trust your data, it allows you to forecast more precisely. Ultimately, analytics delivers the ability to replicate the processes within previous wins by revealing patterns. As you recognize the trends, you’re able to think more strategically by understanding how likely an opportunity will result in closed-won business and the specific techniques used in turning similar opportunities into wins, which lets you provide an accurate close date so your production team can confidently plan.
How Analytics Deliver Critical Benefits
With predictive analytics, you can coach sellers on behaviors like using the successful questions that top performers ask during discovery to identify various stakeholders. Or perhaps there’s a particular type of messaging used when you’re head-to-head against a certain competitor that has proven successful. Without analytics, you may not have noticed the similarities of new opportunities to past deals and missed a chance to apply successful techniques.
Another way to leverage data is to recognize how sellers need to move through the prospect’s organization. For instance, sellers may need to secure buy-in from a specific number of buying influences within the organization. They might need to pursue an internal coach earlier in the process to ensure they have a critical stakeholder in place before the deal moves to a particular stage. The data also informs you when sellers may need help, along with where organizations may need to make additional investments. You’ll also free up seller time by prioritizing which deals are most likely to close.