Selligy, a sales tools innovator, has revealed in its 2014 Sales Analytics Survey that the sales industry is on the cusp of a data-driven revolution, early last week.
“Most sales leaders have been staring at the same CRM reports for a decade, and this survey shows that a wave of change has started,” points out Nilay Patel, Selligy CEO and co-founder, “Sales leaders have always valued hustle. Now they’re starting to measure it.”
The survey declares that, “CRM cloud analytics is crossing the chasm,” as a major fraction of firms have deployed cloud analytics or are in the planning process of doing it. It turns out that 46 percent of respondents at Dreamforce either already have (19.2 percent) or plan to implement (27.3 percent) new cloud analytics with their CRM within the next year.
However, 16.5 percent would probably not implement cloud analytics in the next year and 37 percent needed more information before any action in this regard.
Selligy’s study of CRM data found that 79 percent of sales records in typical CRM systems have no data tracking the activities the salesperson performed as a result, companies can’t use CRM data to perform basic analyses of what (and who) is working in sales engagements, reports a press release announcing the survey.
Early adopters of cloud analytics have started to address these “long-standing data gaps.” Respondents that plan to use new sales analytics tools within the next year are also those who most often require their salespeople to log calls (73 percent), emails (69 percent) and tasks (70 percent) into CRM.
Apparently the data-driven sales revolution influences the accuracy of sales forecasts as well as the management of sales performance, pointing to a significant gap between the needs of sales leaders and current CRM data.
Selligy believes that apart from tracking “what salespeople did last week,” organisations will need cloud analytics tools to help optimize the sales process by guiding salespeople while improving strategy of sales performance for sustained competitive advantage.
Dreamforce 2014, saw Selligy conduct the survey on the floor to find that investment in cloud analytics has started to take off, and that the companies leading the charge are also addressing a long-time CRM blind spot: the sales process. It further points out that data-driven sales methods can dramatically alter how teams are managed by leaders.
(Image credit: Salesforce)
