People love numbered lists! The internet is chock full of articles, blogs and forums regaling us with numbered lists of important business factors and ways to beat the competition. With titles like, ‘The Five Best Ways to Attract New Customers’, ‘The Ten Most Important Things a Business Manager Should Know’, the lists are apparently endless.
Either you love these lists or you hate them. Either you think you have seen enough and you have it all down, or you are overwhelmed by all of the ‘most important’, ‘critical’, ‘can’t miss’ factors and considerations. No matter how you feel about this type of advice, you may want to consider this particular list – especially if you are a sales or marketing professional or a business owner or manager who wants to create, market and sell products or services and stay ahead of the competition and of customer expectations.
Conversion is the name of the game in marketing and sales and the way to get there isn’t by guesswork or opinion. It is by understanding cold, hard facts! Spotting the trends and patterns, understanding the buying behaviors and changes in your competitive, customer and market segmentation, and establishing and monitoring objective metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial to success. When you can see the problem or opportunity coming, you will resolve the issue or capitalize on the trend and avoid mistakes, missteps and missed opportunities.
A retailer, sales team, marketing manager or business that uses business intelligence to monitor and manage sales, marketing, advertising, social media, competitive or other sales-related activities will reap numerous benefits.
Here is the pitch for this particular numbered list of items, aka, The Top Ten Benefits of Using Business Intelligence to Improve Sales Conversion
1. The team can set targets and allocate resources based on authentic data, rather than speculation.
2. The business can establish, monitor and adapt accurate forecasts and budgets based on up-to-date, verified data and objective KPIs
3. Sales, marketing and business managers can analyze current data, and possible cross-sell and up-sell revenue paths and the estimated lifetime value of a customer
4. Users can analyze the elements of sales efforts (prospecting, up-selling, discounts, channel partners, sales collaterals, presentations) and adapt processes that do not provide a competitive edge and strong customer relationships and client loyalty
5. The business will achieve a consistent view of performance, with a clear picture of unexpected variations in sales and immediate corrective action and strategic adjustment based on trends and patterns
6. The marketing and sales teams will understand product profitability and customer behavior, by spotlighting customers and products with the highest contribution to the bottom line
7. Managers can revise expense and resource allocation using the net value of each customer segment or product group
8. The business can identify the most effective tactics and mechanisms, and the best resources and tools, to meet organizational sales objectives
9. The organization can establish a personalized, automated alert system to identify and monitor upcoming opportunities and threats
Those are just some of the reasons that a sales and marketing team needs business intelligence! The benefits of a good BI solution are too numerous to mention but if you take away nothing more from this article than the fact that business intelligence can significant improve sales conversion and close deals – then I’ve done my job!
