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Many times, the gaps in revenue are not a function of the sales teams.
That’s a bold statement, so let it sink in for a minute.
However, we find that it’s often a function of the process and data they have to go to market for acquiring, retaining, and expanding customers. That’s why we believe a data-driven revenue growth strategy is essential.
We call it the revenue room.
The revenue room integrates the functions within an organization that are critical to revenue development from sales to marketing to finance and more to develop a comprehensive, targeted approach to aligning data, product, and revenue strategy. Data intelligence and alignment are key to refining your sales process.
Misalignment Causes Problems
One of the biggest reasons for customer churn is what we call “Your Own Dang Fault” — failing to control program performance that is within your ability to do so. A salesperson might sign a broad-ranging deal with multiple layers. The client’s happy and the salesperson has done their job. But…when it gets to the service delivery team, they struggle to figure out exactly what was sold.
So, they try to deploy programs that deliver on the expectations — but may fall short.
If you are using data to assess your programs, you can diagnose when you have an overexuberant salesperson who is selling products that lead to customer dissatisfaction or programs that aren’t meeting client objectives. You can then coach up that salesperson to help them sell the right product mix that meets customer goals.
The digital information you have is important to prove the case to the salesperson, who may need persuading to change their approach.
On the other hand, maybe the salesperson did sell the exact right product mix. You have the data to back it up so you can go to the customer success team and ensure they deliver on the promises. Tracking these metrics against the goals will show whether you are hitting the targets. If not, you need to pivot and re-assess. This improves the overall customer experience.
Leveraging Revenue Intelligence
Often, revenue intelligence data is collected but it’s not being utilized for better decision-making. For example, there’s a misconception that everything useful about clients exists in the CRM. That’s simply not true, especially when you are doing sales forecasting and empowering your sales team. There’s a lot of data that sits outside your CRM that is crucial to how you sell.
Often, there is a disconnect with the data collected. The average company has 17 petabytes of data and nearly 60% of that data is no longer being actively used or managed. It’s often scattered across different platforms, cloud providers, and third-party applications. It may be siloed in different departments or only exists in individual salespeople’s notes. Curating and blending the data into a single source of revenue truth is key to delivering on the most important KPIs.
Instead of churn, for example, a company might have strong retention but they see their wallet share is not moving. That’s often an upsell expansion issue. It might be that sales teams aren’t focusing on upsell opportunities or you may not have the right products to grow your share of business.
Regardless, understanding your most important KPIs and then tracking them consistently will help everyone stay focused on the key revenue drivers. However, this only works if you can capture all of the data from your CRM and different sources with an easy way to visualize it.
Real-Time Reporting and Tracking KPIs
Real-time reporting with a single source of revenue truth can empower you to:
- Uncover hidden opportunities to grow revenue
- Identify bottlenecks in the sales, marketing, or product cycle
- Benchmark performance with hard data to focus efforts
- Empower your team to make data-driven decisions
A Forbes Insight analysis showed the power of this data in a unified view that impacts customer experience and sales success. Those surveyed reported these benefits:
- 57%: greater ability to target and optimize for specific customers.
- 56%: Improve consistency of touchpoints across channels
- 51%: Greater context to engagements
- 49%: More accurately predict customer needs and desires
- 45%: Achieve higher conversion rates
- 25%: Secure more meaningful feedback for products and services
Despite the obvious benefits, 87% of marketers say data is their most under-utilized asset. Seth Marrs, Principal Analysts at Forrester put it this way: “Data visibility has been a missing link preventing sales and marketing teams from aligning.”
The Power of First-Party Data
First-party data is information you gather directly from your customers or prospects. The most common is tracking behavior on your website. When you see prospects who are reading articles, looking at products or services, or doing deep dives into solutions briefs or product specs, they are sending intent signals.
Leveraging first-party data is powerful. Let’s say someone keeps coming back to articles about supply chain optimization. You have newsletters focused on the supply chain, an event coming up about optimization, and an active supply chain community. You will want to get that prospect engaged with each of these touchpoints and provide relevant messaging for this prospect.
In marketing, there’s a lot of talk about personalization. However, that’s just part of the equation. Success comes from personalization plus relevancy.
Building Sustainable Revenue Growth
In sales, you need every possible edge to build sustainable growth. McKinsey research shows that the top performers generate about 2.6 times the sales ROI of poor performers, driving profitability. Equipping your team with the right tools and the comprehensive data they need can help you join the ranks of top performers to scale your revenue.
H2K Labs empowers midsize B2B companies to scale and excel through data. We focus on data strategy, revenue strategy, and product strategy — leveraging cutting-edge data intelligence cloud designed to fuel top and bottom-line growth.
Contact H2K Labs today to discuss how a comprehensive data, revenue, and product strategy can deliver on your revenue goals.