One thread that ran through the sessions at AA-ISP’s inside sales conference in Chicago last week was: 1384137682395. That’s right. 1384137682395. Dollars. Percentages. Rates. Ratios. “Batting averages,” even. Numbers. The language of numbers, thinking analytically and driving decisions based on numbers was a shared language throughout the conference. And numbers don’t have to be complicated; many lessons were simple but still powerful for sales productivity. Here are a few we heard: People need to receive an average of 6-7 lead nurturing contacts by marketing before they are sales ready. The close ratio of “buying signal leads” versus “tire kicker leads” is 8:1. Buying signal leads request pricing, demos and trials. Tire kicker leads download white papers and attend webinars. LinkedIn messages can return a response rate 3x more than email; LinkedIn InMail messages can return a response rate 30x more than email. Email stretches out sales communications and sales cycles from what could have been 5 minutes to 5 days or 5 weeks or more. Don’t hide behind email. Have conversations. Test different strategies for cold calls and initial conversations. One strategy may deliver 130 product demos while another strategy may deliver 390 product demos. Implementing tests and processes that …Read More
Tag Archives: sales data
Using temps to clean sales data – do’s and dont’s
We have been in organizations that have tried to use temps for sales data cleansing, and now have clients that do this. We know why you do it, and what you seek to achieve. But often we see this endeavor is not done well and as a result, doesn’t get you where you want to go. We offer database and sales analytics software and services. Temp cleaning is not what we offer. We do clean customer data not as a stand-alone service, but to add more value so that our predictive models are more accurate and actionable. We use structured cleansing and matching processes, B2B databases, rigorous profiling and analytical validation procedures. But here we’ll share our observations and tips about using temps for your benefit. This is because we are passionate about data, and have seen many instances where data cleansing was not done right, and later we had to work harder to fix it. We sincerely hope you find these tips valuable. IT, Sales and Marketing should inform each other before data cleansing starts. Just like you wouldn’t dig a trench in your yard without calling Julie – we hope! – the group that initiates this activity must be transparent and inclusive of …Read More
Spring Cleaning: Data hygiene tips that keep your sales data always ready for analysis
Predictive analytics needs a foundation of clean data. Here are top tips from our most recent lead gen implementation on Salesforce.com. You can use these immediately in any environment: Address standardization and change of address. Typically up to 30% of records lack complete address information. This affects both deliverability and duplicate search. If you have not done so in 3 years, run a Change of Address (NCOA) process to get your customer’s new addresses. Stay up to date on your customers because 10% of businesses move each year. When you receive a street address change, but it’s a PO Box in the same city, retain both — one for mailing and one for secondary validation. Dupes are the silent killer. Because a single comprehensive definition does not fit all, de-dupe the files using a variety of match logic. You can try a loose match logic (a few criteria, gives more duplicates) or tight match logic (more criteria, resulting in fewer duplicates). Take address elements into account, but use transactional information to determine which record to keep or drop. For example, between duplicates you might want to merge a record with multiple contacts into a record with the largest sales amount or the record with the longest …Read More
Are you doing business in 107 countries? Or 7? Data hygiene matters in predictive analytics
On a recent assignment for setting up lead generation, we took on an existing customer database to build a statistical model to score a leads database. The client does business in 7 countries, or so they said and I believed them. But they quickly added a caveat, “no one has looked at our database in awhile.” First, we looked at their billing country field. This had been an open text field in their Salesforce.com system that could be edited by just about anyone. What we found was amazing. There were so many variations for each country that unique values quickly proliferated to 107. Misspelling, case difference, punctuation and abbreviations all conspired to create many versions of the same country! Our first order of the day was to identify the obvious countries and group them, followed by corrections to the remaining data. This took 107 countries down to the correct 7. Then the country field was locked and going forward, a drop-down menu of countries is being used to prevent this proliferation from happening again. For statistical modelers, why is cleaning data important for sales intelligence? First of all, we want to point out that even a simple field can pose a challenge. In the absence …Read More
How is sales data like music?
In ROI of SaaS analytic solutions for sales, we described how innovation is changing the ROI of analytic endeavors. This has a profound impact on sales operations where predictive analytics needs to drive profitability – and pay for itself. We’ve passionately embraced this philosophy. So how exactly is the ROI of analytics changing? Just as the distribution and delivery of music evolved from LPs to 8-tracks, cassette tapes to CDs, with innovation continuing online, so has the distribution of data – and analytics – evolved. Remember paying $19.99 for a CD but there was just one song you really liked? That happened an untold number of times to us. The digitization of music for CDs opened the door for online delivery. While CDs existed before Internet became mainstream, when the two innovations converged, the stage was set for a new and efficient way of distributing music. Consider iTunes. You want only one track, not the whole album? You got it. You want to sample before buying? You got that too. Fast, easy. And now streaming is not that far off. Unthinkable back when you were perusing CDs in bins at record stores. Which actually wasn’t that long ago … was it? Today, sales leaders expect to pay for results relevant …Read More