Benefits of data displays for the sales department
You cannot deny the value of the visual. How can you best understand the progress of your business: with data reflected in a graph or in a table containing a long list of numbers? Thanks to the dashboards included in the different Business Intelligence software solutions, those in charge of the sales department can view, in real time, the performance of their operations and that of the members of their sales team, detect new opportunities and even simulate scenarios to test their strategies… In summary, they have a resource that will help them to improve the sales results for their organisation.
Apart from leading the sales drive for the company, the sales manager needs to deal with a range of very diverse tasks each day. Some examples are:
- Identify client consumption patterns
- Consolidate the existing client base and collaborate in attracting new clients
- Control and analyse the performance of each sales person, as well as the complete sales team as a whole
- Control and analyse sales of products and/or services
- Promote sales by playing an active part in marketing campaigns
Today, the sales manager has an unbeatable ally: Business Intelligence software. With just one tool, it helps him/her to manage all data related to these processes so that they can undergo an in-depth analysis.
There are very visual analytical platforms, such as Tableau or Looker, that offer a complete view of the metrics and key performance indicators (the most well-known, such as KPI) required by sales operations to optimise their forecasts, planning and decision making. The ability to integrate client and marketing data is also essential for understanding sales scenarios and for building competitive advantages without slowing down the positive direction of your sales.
These metrics and indicators can be broken down to a great level of detail and grouped into dashboards. They also allow the combination of criteria to obtain more information, for example, on sales results for each client or group of clients, for the different territories, and for different sales periods.
Benefits of displaying data for sales managers
The data displays offered by Business Intelligence solutions provide substantial advantages to the sales managers of an organisation. Notable among these are:
1. More and better client-based sales. Thanks to Business Intelligence software such as Tableau or Looker, a sales manager will know how clients behave in a very visual manner (both collectively and as individuals): what they buy and what they don’t buy, which channel they make their purchases through (direct sales, e-commerce, physical premises, third party online platforms, etc.). With this information, they can offer the items sought by their clients, carry out cross- and up-selling, and even improve the sales strategy by reinforcing the weakest points or those that are expected to grow.
2. Optimising the service to the client. By analysing sales and finding out about the client’s shopping habits, the sales manager can learn their clients’ requirements to the last detail. This will enable the organisation to offer them a better service, to consolidate their commercial relationship and gain their loyalty. Some examples: Perfecting the sales pitch in order to respond to any questions and show the client the economic benefit of their purchase, adding new items to the stock to complement the offers, or working with warehouse policies to ensure there are no gaps in stock.
3. Success of decisions based on data. “Instinct” usually accompanies good salespeople, but being able to contrast this intuition with data provides the sales manager with a new dimension. Being able to review performance, or breaking down the results by client, salesperson or product may lead to increased sales. Reviewing historic data will also give an understanding of the seasonality of sales and will help to forecast times of greater demand. In summary, data is the best justification for making decisions, as it is comparable and objective.
4. A single point of information. On spreadsheets, databases, ERP and CRM, TPV, various cloud applications… You would be surprised to find out over how many archives businesses distribute their stored sales data! Business Intelligence software like Tableau or Looker takes the information from all these sources and shows it to the sales manager at just one point and permanently updated. This means that decision making is accelerated, the same information is shared between all authorised users and the global performance of the sales team is improved.
5. Support to other departments. The sales department is not the only one that can benefit from the advantages of viewing the sales data. With the information shown on these dashboards, the operations section can also optimise their planning and forecasts for product demand and, by doing so, take timely decisions relating to production, product development and client service. At the same time, the marketing section will know which sales campaigns work best and which ones need to be improved or removed. Lastly, the board of directors can also access the dashboards on sales activity in as much detail as they require, which allows them to take successful decisions on this section and improve their commercial investments.
At Intelligence Partner, we possess a wide range of experience in assisting sales managers to improve their results through the use of data displays, such as the Tableau or Looker Business Intelligence software which has recently been incorporated into the Smart Analytics offer on Google Cloud.
We invite you to trial how to take advantage of this tool’s potential for managing your organisation’s sales data and converting it into real information with added value.
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