Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Birst Offers Analytics Tips To Drive In Sales

June 19, 2009

With business intelligence (BI) now available hosted and able to be readily tapped, it is bringing advanced analytics to employees (and organizations) that have never before had access to it reports Birst, which provides on-demand BI.
 
This new populism says the firm, has the potential to revolutionize the way organizations respond to customers and business trends, but only if the right questions are asked and the proper metrics applied.
 
Birst co-founder Paul Staelin, who is the former head of Siebel’s (now Oracle) Sales Analytics team, has these analytics tips for driving more sales from trends:

 
1.         Think speed and certainty, not size alone, when evaluating pipeline 
 
Do evaluate how quickly deals are moving through the pipeline.  Evaluate close rates, deal size, and the length of sales cycles to identify fast, low-risk plays and focus resources there. 
 
2.         Focus on the cross-sell first and new customers later
 
Do a white space analysis: first see which products current customers are using and find out which additional products similar customers have.  This helps you to create a cross-selling plan and put it in action. 
 
3.         Give yourself checkpoints – don’t just look back from wherever you ended up
 
Do use analysis to become more agile and respond to needs and concerns as they arise.  Keep strategies flexible so that you can adapt to shifts in the market.  Regular and timely corrections will help you stay on course to meet your goals. 
 
 4.        Marketing and sales need to work together, so evaluate them together
 
Do analyze marketing and sales results together to determine which campaigns consistently drive the most leads at the right lead cost per revenue achieved. 
 
 5.        Success is not random.  Discover your pattern for success
 
Every company has strengths and weaknesses. Do you know what your strengths are?  Identify which industries, company sizes, and titles have faster and more successful sales cycles, so that you can focus your efforts here.  
 
6.         Failure is not random, either.  Know when it’s safer to focus somewhere else
 
There might be clear signs of danger zones:  knowing where they are keeps your team focused on success.  Educational industry never seems to work out?  Deprioritize it. 
 

Brendan B. Read is ContactCenterSolutions’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi



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