Managing a sales team and deriving optimum output from them is no walk in the park. You may recruit top sales leaders, give them autonomy and expect the sales numbers to flourish. Well, it’s not that easy. There is a raft of interwoven variables and strategies that have the potential to impact a sales team’s efficacy.

We are living in the 21^st century where data and technology rule the roost. The reliance on data and tech tools today is so fierce that working without sound, empirical data, is akin to shooting arrows in the dark. It can prove to have a detrimental influence not only on the sales performance but also on the reputation of the company.

To stay ahead of the curve and touch the heights of sales success, the inclusion of sales analytics in the repertoire of your sales team is paramount.

Sales analytics act as a window filled with insights and possibilities that sales reps, team leads and sales managers can fish into to augment their strategies, assess sales performance and set goals.

Sales analytics tools help sales leaders dig into history and filter actionable data about sales activities, profits and losses to make smarter decisions about present opportunities. Leveraging big data is a stellar tactic to judge sales performance, forecast pipeline and analyze lead scoring.

Around 84% of high-performance sales leaders say that analytics will increase within the next couple of years. Most importantly, sales analytics help sales employees to do their job more effectively and with pinpoint accuracy.

Let’s us give you a lowdown on how sales analytics tools can be a boon for sales teams.

1. Keep track of performance: Real-time sales analytics software help sales managers to keep a better eye on their team’s performance and reveal the pitfalls that need to be looked into, improved or restructured to enhance productivity. Underperformers in the team will be tracked and highlighted by the tracking mechanism of the sales analytics software. Sales managers can locate the dip in performance and coach them effectively to arrest the slide.
2. Set proper goals: “A goal properly set is halfway reached,” says master salesman Zig Ziglar. Goals give employees a direction, motivate them, trigger a change in behaviour, promote self-mastery, and goads them to achieve the attainable. The opposite happens without a pre-determined goal. Sales analytic data gives you complete information on how you can set short-term and long-term goals that are measurable, time-framed and crystal clear. Since the whole thing is governed by data, you can track your progress and measure your performance.
3. Filter out bad data: No matter how meticulously you plan your sales strategies by the sales playbook, if you are working with bad data, all your hard work will blow up in smoke. Bad data occurs due to human errors or system errors. With an effective sales analytics solution, sales reps can filter out bad data that can harm sales prospects and locate other problematic areas to improve the system as a whole.
4. Empower mobile workforce: Sales analytics software helps to get real-time information and performance metrics on the go. With constant stream of information flowing into the system, mobile salespersons can plug into any information database and leverage it for their fieldwork. It helps them do the same work on the field that they do on the desk.
5. Gamify Sales: Sales analytics helps the sales team to get a detailed view of the sales processes and data to the team leaders including number of calls, number of deal closures, new accounts and sales value. These insights can be used to gamify a team’s efforts. High-performing sales employees can be treated with good incentives and prizes. This can lift the team’s competitive spirit.