After reading that data is the key to growing your business, you’ve spent hours every week poring over your sales data so that you can create plans to increase sales performance. You’ve put what you read into practice and are making data driven decisions. An increase in sales and growth must be right around the corner, right?
Maybe not.
Your Sales Reps still aren’t increasing their numbers and they don’t get it when you try to show them areas where they can improve. As a business owner, one of your biggest priorities is to grow the business by increasing the amount of sales coming in, but so far, you’ve not been able to improve upon your sales performance.
So what’s the answer?
Data Democratization: The Key to a Well-Performing Sales Team
Data democratization, the process of sharing your data with everyone on your team, has the power to increase your sales team's performance by:
- Enabling sales reps to diagnose their own strengths and weaknesses
- Improving communication between you and your team, showing them when their actions lead to (or don’t lead to) results
- Improving your team’s decision making
- Changing the way your reps sell your product or service
- Boosting team confidence
- And more
To give you an idea of just how powerful data democratization is, the team at BrightGauge has been able to break sales records and grow larger each year because our sales data is on a dashboard for everyone to see.
Here’s how you can achieve similar results:
Which Sales Metrics to Share
What metrics do you share with your Sales team?
Share all relevant and important metrics. For example you may want to share:
- Month to Date Sales
- Win Rate
- Lead Response Time
- Open Opportunities per Rep
- Average Deal Size
- Sales Cycle
It’s important that you don’t overwhelm your team with data, so only display a handful of the metrics that matter most.
Once you’ve got the precautions in place and you’ve figured out the metrics you want to share, you need to determine how to effectively share your data with your team.
The Top Methods for Sharing Data with Your Team
There are a couple of methods you could use to share your key metrics, and we will give each a brief overview:
A few years ago, the most common method of sharing key metrics with your team was in the form of a weekly meeting. While this still works today, it isn’t the most efficient use of your team's time.
Another method is to create reports that you send via email to your team each week. While this doesn’t require your team to be in a meeting each week, it has a little bit of lag time, which means that if a sale closes today, and you don’t send out a report until next week, you may not be sharing fast enough!
The last method you could use is a dashboard displayed in a way that your whole team can easily see it. This doesn’t require a significant time investment from you or your team, and is often the go to choice for companies looking to share data with their team.
How TUC Managed IT Solutions Increased their Sales with Data Democratization
TUC Managed IT Solutions, a BrightGauge power user, has been using dashboards in their office for several years now, and by doing so have increased the number of leads they close. They were also able to cut down on the time spent on admin related tasks, helping their team to focus more on making more sales.
They've incorporated some interesting ideas like gamification to create a data driven sales team. Using dashboards, they’ve uncovered new sales opportunities, built customer relationships and more.
Learn about the dashboards they use and the tips they give in this webinar recording:
Creating Your Own Success Story
Becoming data driven on a management level is no longer sufficient.
To experience real results, you’ve got to embrace data democracy. Use the tips and tactics we shared in this article and you’ll have a great chance at improving your company’s sales and growth. Take the necessary precautions, share the right metrics, and use a dashboard as I mentioned above.
If you have any questions about using data democratization to increase your sales, leave a comment below and we’ll be happy to help!
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