The Importance of Capturing Sales Data

Is your team capturing sales data? As teams are becoming increasingly dispersed, sales managers need a reliable way to manage rep activity and performance. For the most efficient organizations, capturing sales data is that solution.

Virtually all business decisions made across a company are based on numbers. In sales, your monthly quota, yearly revenue, and who you hire, or fire, all revolve around numbers. So, it only makes sense that the smaller numbers – the daily, weekly, or even monthly calls made by your sales team – that add up to these greater sums – yearly revenue goals – be calculated precisely.

There is an abundance of sales enablement technologies on the market – but not all are created equal. Tools tailored towards performance management and analytics specifically can optimize rep performance with aspects such as activity dashboards and speech analytics; both of which allow managers to uncover new revenue opportunities, reduce costs, and ensure new hires are properly onboarded.

If you are interested in implementing a tool like this for your sales team, below you will uncover why capturing sales data is the smartest way to improve rep performance and increase revenue at your company.

Capturing Sales Data

Sales managers rely on pipeline to determine how their teams are performing, and to properly anticipate revenue. But what happens when deals don’t pan out? If your team is consistently missing revenue targets, how can management uncover the reasons why and ways to improve?

Sales leaders can bridge the visibility gap into the daily calling activities of reps by managing based on actual activity and accurate data. Whether you work at a large call center or a company with dispersed offices, capturing sales data and analytics helps leaders gain visibility into reps’ activity to better manage performance and accurately set revenue goals. The following are two aspects of sales analytics that can specifically benefit your organization:

Call Recording & Speech Analytics

Insight into the quality vs. quantity of sales calls is an asset that is only available with the use of a sales tool. The quantity of calls a rep is making undoubtedly matters, but the quality of the call is arguably more important. The ability to analyze call quality is something all sales managers should utilize, and speech analytics technology can provide insight into agent’s tone, keyword usage, and a prospect’s sentiment. With this valuable data, managers can proactively measure sales and campaigns, and cultivate better rep behaviors while getting rid of bad habits.

Further, managers can capitalize on new sales opportunities by utilizing previously recorded conversations with existing customers. Call recordings provide managers and reps with insights into customer questions, concerns, and thoughts that can be used to create personal deals or packages specific to each customer. In doing this due diligence and preparing for each call, customers become more comfortable with reps and your brand, which can only improve the quality of the call.

KPIs & Performance Dashboards

Sales training and onboarding are critical to sales effectiveness. In order to optimize these areas, managers need visibility into activity data to truly understand why reps are successful or struggling. With real-time dashboards that display the metrics your reps are generating daily – calls placed, contacts made, appointments set, and so on – management can make better coaching and training decisions for their team.

Additionally, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be set in place to introduce performance standards. Metrics such as appointments set per week let managers know where their reps stand, and when further coaching or training initiatives are needed. KPIs also give reps short- and long-term goals to set their minds on. When your sales team, reps and managers alike, is on the same page regarding goals and revenue, your team will be more effective.

The truth is, gamification and fostering friendly competition will only help your sales numbers. A sales tool provides the ability to capture call activity data, and multiply successful behaviors of reps across the board. Displaying activity data in real-time gives reps an incentive to improve performance and out perform their peers. Further, struggling reps can look at what their successful peers are doing differently and learn how to adapt their behaviors.

Manage with the Metrics that Matter

Sales enablement technology empowers organizations to capture data, regardless of phone or device, in order to better understand team activity. Capturing sales data eliminates manual documentation processes to create reliable, actionable sales insights — insights both sales leaders and reps can refer to and rely on to better reach their goals.

Learn how capturing sales data can benefit your organization and optimize rep performance.