Don't Ignore this Data

Your sales data is more than a report - it’s a roadmap. In this video, I reveal why ignoring it can cost you opportunities and how to turn insight into action.

Don't forget to check out last week's top tip: This Powerful Phrase Creates Action!

For more strategies like this, check out my sales tip video library on YouTube...

If you prefer to read - here is the transcript:

I was working with a sales team and a sales enablement team the other day and somebody blurted out, well, you know Colleen, data doesn't close deals - people do. And he was right. Sort of...

The best salespeople use data to help them close the deal. They don't close the deal in isolation or with their blinders on. They pay attention to the data in their pipeline and the data that they gather while qualifying that opportunity, and they use that to spot pinch points, to spot green flags, to spot holes, to spot opportunities, and to spot reframes. If you're not using good data, then you are going into that opportunity blindly.

And we use data in two ways in sales. One, to drive decisions about our territory and our pipeline, the macro level, do we need more opportunities? For example. And we also use data inside the micromanagement of our opportunity.

Do we have enough people that we're talking to? Have we qualified the opportunity using a series of benchmarks or litmus tests? Is this deal taking longer to close than average? Is it bigger or smaller than our average size deal? Are there starting to be warning signs based on the number of days it takes a customer to return our calls? Have they stopped returning our calls? Have we stopped reaching out to them?

Those data points are objective, and when we objectively look at those data points, we can make decisions about what to do next. Whether to course correct, whether to stay the course, whether to make changes.

So don't make the mistake of thinking it's all about you. You are the art. Use the science and balance both out to guarantee that you will close more deals in less time.