Sales Analytics Maturity Model: Are You A Data Champion Or A Data Laggard?

Sales analytics has proven to be a key source for driving predictable revenue growth. Simultaneously, sales analytics is creating a significant, ever growing business advantage for the data “champions” against the data “laggards”.

Data and analytics empower businesses, leaders and employees to make better decisions and improve the overall business performance. Nevertheless, there is a substantial gap between the early adopters of predictive analytics and the revenue teams still running their sales processes on note books.

While the road to being a data champion is not an easy one, it’s necessary and well worth the effort. Recent BCG research commissioned by Google shows how data champions grow their revenue over twice as fast as laggards, and the performance gap will continue to widen.

What is the analytics maturity model?

The analytics maturity model is a framework that helps businesses determine how they can use their data to find insights and make decisions. Gartner’s Analytics Maturity Model consists of the following four phases representing different maturity levels at which organizations can be during their adoption journey in analytics.

• Descriptive Analytics - what happened - is the simplest form of analytics and the foundation for more in-depth types of analytics. Descriptive analytics summarizes what happened or is happening by pulling trends from raw data and providing insight into what these trends mean.

• Diagnostic Analytics - why did this happen - includes comparing trends or movement, seeing if there are correlations between certain statistics, and determining cause-and-effect relationships where possible.

• Predictive Analytics - what might happen in the future - leverages historical data to make predictions on future trends or results. Predictions can be done manually or with machine-learning algorithms.

• Prescriptive Analytics - what should we do next - takes into account all possible factors in a scenario and suggests actionable takeaways.

Basically, the value of the analytics gets higher as you proceed into the advanced phases of the analytics.

What are the typical levels of progression in sales analytics?

While every company can become a data champion, knowing one’s starting point is important. These typical levels in sales analytics maturity represent a progression from a basic, reactive approach to a more advanced, proactive, and innovative use of analytics in sales. Organizations move through the stages by investing in technology, talent, and processes to enhance their analytical capabilities and ultimately gain a competitive advantage in the markets. 

• Basic/Ad Hoc Level means very limited or no use of analytics. Decisions are primarily based on intuition and historical experience rather than data.

• Awareness Level suggests recognizing the importance of data and analytics in sales. Basic reporting tools may be in place, but analytics are not fully integrated into decision-making processes.

• Proactive Level entails starting to use more advanced analytics tools. Some predictive analytics may be applied to forecast sales trends and data-driven insights are becoming a more significant factor in decision-making.

• Optimization Level supposes that advanced analytics are well-integrated into sales processes. Predictive and prescriptive analytics are used to optimize sales strategies and there is a focus on continuous improvement and refining sales operations based on data-driven insights.

• Innovative Level signifies that cutting-edge analytics technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, are actively employed. Sales strategies are highly adaptive, leveraging real-time data for decision-making. The organization is at the forefront of using analytics to drive innovation in sales.
  

Predictive sales analytics in a shareable format.

How to become a sales analytics champion?

Any company can become an analytics champion and any champion can fall behind without continued investment and innovation. The key is to continue to improve both the analytics maturity and adoption across relevant stakeholders to tap into the rich vein of business insights that will elevate performance and ensure the company’s future success. 

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Dear Lucy offers data-driven sales insights across sales solutions like Salesforce, Microsoft, HubSpot and Pipedrive. Book a session with our expert to learn more!

Tech-powered Sales Growth: How Self-serve Analytics Maximizes Sales Rep Performance

Growth champions are today driving rapid, smart decision-making across sales teams and witnessing the power of self-serve sales analytics in maximizing sales reps’ performance.

Sales has traditionally been seen as more of an art than a science, driven by sales reps' intuitions for planning the next moves and guesswork for submitting forecasts. However, we’re now witnessing a quick shift towards data-driven sales.

Sales analytics as key source for revenue growth

Sales analytics is a sales team's hidden superpower. It enables sales reps to effectively track, evaluate, and enhance their sales performance by quickly acting on insights and recommendations. It also helps sales teams predict sales trends and forecast the future performance.

According to McKinsey’s research, companies that are using data-driven sales-growth engines report revenue increases of up to 20 percent and EBITDA increases in the range of 15 to 25 percent. 

Keys to setting up actionable self-serve analytics for sales reps

Actionable sales analytics refers to the use of data and insights to inform specific, practical actions that sales teams can take to improve their performance and achieve better results. 

Actionable goals steer the sellers towards hitting the quota.

1. Actionable goals to set the direction

   Sales KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are the most important way to determine whether or not your company is moving in the right direction. KPIs are values that can be measured against desired results. The key is to cut the fluff, and focus only on what’s absolutely necessary to optimize overall sales performance.
   

   By clearly defining KPIs and visualizing the goals, sales reps will always be guided on what’s needed to hit the quota. Actionable goals are clearly defined, tangible objectives that can guide sales reps toward the outcomes they want. Such goals steer the reps toward action because you've defined exactly what you want and considered how you'll get there.

2. Live recommendation for the next best move

   Timely, up-to-date insights are essential to making the right decisions at the right time. The best action to take next may be contacting the champion of a deal that scores high or addressing an account at risk of churn.

   To boost the adoption and ensure your sales reps are empowered by data at all times, the most effective approach is to seamlessly embed analytics tools into the sales process and sales teams go-to-solutions, like CRM. 

   Furthermore, configuring automated alerts and notifications for critical events or changes in data drives rapid, smart actions. For instance, if a deal is at risk or if a sales rep achieves a significant milestone, they can receive automated alerts.

3. Shared insights to boost the motivation

   
   Best-performing sales teams highly rank the importance of transparent performance data that’s accessible to all. It helps sellers stay motivated and on track to hit their goals. 

   Transparent performance data holds individuals accountable for their results. Knowing that their performance is being tracked and visible to others encourages sellers to take ownership of their goals and work towards meeting or surpassing them. Transparency in performance metrics also allows salespeople to identify areas where they may be falling short. 

Sales analytics embedded inside CRM to drive smart decision-making and actions at all times.

Driving maximized sales rep performance

By integrating self-serve analytics into the sales process, organizations empower their sales reps with the tools and information needed to thrive in a dynamic and competitive business environment. The result is improved efficiency, better decision-making, and ultimately, enhanced sales performance.

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Dear Lucy offers data-driven sales insights across sales solutions like Salesforce, Microsoft, HubSpot and Pipedrive. Book a session with our expert to learn more!

How to Create Accurate Sales Forecasts with HubSpot

Are your sales forecasts still based on primitive guesses and intuition? In this blog post we share tips on how to improve forecasting accuracy with HubSpot and Dear Lucy.

What is a sales forecast?

Gartner defines sales forecast as: 

“..a projection of future sales revenue and a prediction of which deals will move through the sales cycle. Sales forecasts drive short-term spending decisions and impact decisions on key deals.”

Why are sales forecasts important?

Accurate sales forecasting is the foundation for success. It enables smart decision-making, informs budgets and helps detect potential threats before it’s too late.

Companies with more advanced forecasting processes and tools perform overall better than their peers because they deeply understand their business drivers and can shape the outcome of a sales period before the period closes. A sales forecast is the most critical aspect of meeting quota.

By identifying the biggest opportunities, the entire revenue team including sales, marketing, customer success, finance and executives can all align and focus their efforts to make the biggest achievable business impact.

How to accurately forecast sales?

Improving the accuracy of your sales forecasts depends on multiple factors, including strong collaboration, reliable sales data and an analytics-based process.

Typically sales forecasting is a weekly, iterative process including the following reviews:

• One-on-one sales meetings between sales leaders and reps for pipeline inspection, reviewing key opportunities and adjusting individual forecasts.

• Forecast calls with the revenue organization for pipeline health and pipeline coverage, aligning on prioritizations and confirming team/business forecasts.

• Presentation of the numbers to leadership, board and investors for further discussion and measures.

The key to a successful review process are predictive, real-time insights based on your sales and revenue data from your HubSpot CRM. They allow you to easily analyze your sales pipeline, identify trends and patterns, and adjust your forecasts based on different scenarios.

Predictive sales forecasting with HubSpot and Dear Lucy

Dear Lucy automatically gathers data from your HubSpot across sales, marketing and revenue teams and synthesizes the data into real-time status, actionable insights and predictive forecasts. Dear Lucy’s visual sales insights present a single-source of truth for sales reps, sales leadership and management across the iterative sales forecasting process.

Key insights for accurate sales forecasting include: 

• Predictive sales forecasts segmented by team, business unit, business type

• Recurring (MRR) and one-off revenue forecast

• Predictive deal scores highlighting the high priority deals and deals at risk

• Pipeline analytics such as pipeline coverage, pipeline snapshots, deal slippage

• Actionable goals highlighting the strategy and business requirements

Predictive Insights for Forecast Call by Dear Lucy

Generating sales forecasts requires a rigorous and well-designed forecasting process combined with well-defined data points in HubSpot CRM, such as forecast category, opportunities amount, sales stage, close date and ie. historical performance. When well-communicated and understood, your forecasting accuracy and sales accountability improve dramatically.

Dear Lucy’s Predictive Sales Forecasts right inside your HubSpot

Key benefits of predictive sales forecasting

Traditionally sales forecasting has been a process of exporting CRM data to spreadsheets, manually processing the data and presenting forecasts mostly based on a gut-feeling.

Data-based forecasting and real-time insights forces teams to carefully plan and execute for greatest achievable business impact. Automatic data processing saves a substantial amount of hours wasted and helps teams focus on finding the best paths for reaching and exceeding quota.

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Predictive Deal Scoring - How to Win more Deals and Create Accurate Sales Forecasts

Is your sales team missing quota due to poor focus? Are your sales forecasts constantly inaccurate?  In this blog post we highlight how predictive deal scoring can help prioritize high-potential deals, identify warning signals and enhance forecasting accuracy.

What is predictive deal scoring?

Predictive deal scoring leverages data and predictive models to forecast the probability of success for individual sales opportunities. It enables sales teams to prioritize opportunities, allocate resources efficiently and make informed decisions to improve their win rates and overall sales performance.

It goes beyond traditional deal scoring by incorporating historical data, customer behavior patterns, and various predictive models to generate a probability or score indicating the likelihood of closing a deal successfully.

Deal scores can be used to prioritize deals and create accurate sales forecasts.

What are the key benefits of predictive deal scoring?

1. Enhanced forecasting accuracy

   By leveraging data and advanced analytics techniques, predictive deal scoring provides more accurate forecasts of deal outcomes compared to traditional methods, reducing guesswork and improving overall forecasting accuracy.

2. Better resource allocation

   Predictive deal scoring enables sales teams to allocate their time and resources more effectively by focusing on deals with higher probabilities of success. This improves efficiency and increases the likelihood of achieving sales targets.

3. Early risk detection

   Predictive models can identify potential risks or warning signs associated with a deal. This allows sales teams to take proactive measures to mitigate risks, address customer concerns or adjust their sales strategies accordingly.

4. Sales process optimization

   Predictive deal scoring can provide insights into the effectiveness of different sales activities and strategies. By analyzing historical data, organizations can identify best practices, refine their sales processes and make data-driven decisions to improve overall sales performance.

Dear Lucy’s predictive deal score

Dear Lucy’s deal score comprises of a vast amount of variables that deliver a score from 0-100. Each deal is analyzed in real-time leveraging your CRM data, like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Hubspot and Pipedrive.

Key variables having significant impact on deal outcomes consist of factors such as deal value and stage, customer engagement and engagement trends, opportunity lifetime and close date, sales rep performance, lead source, relationships and customer history and future interaction. Score variables and scoring models are customized for each client based on the sources and amount of data.

Deal scores can be used to prioritize and rank deals, focus resources on high-potential opportunities, and identify areas of concern or risk.

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Interested?

Dear Lucy offers powerful sales insights across sales solutions like Salesforce, Microsoft, HubSpot and Pipedrive. Book a session with our expert to learn more!

Salesforce and HubSpot - Integrated Sales and Marketing Insights

Are you missing a unified view to your sales and marketing funnel? In this blog post we highlight how integrated Salesforce and HubSpot insights can help you drive revenue growth.

Being able to track your performance across the sales and marketing funnel is key to successful revenue operations. Creating integrated sales and marketing insights involves aligning and leveraging data from both sales and marketing departments to gain a comprehensive understanding of the operations and drive business growth. 

Inconsistent sales and marketing operations

In many companies, sales and marketing teams are managed separately and they develop their own technology stacks according to their needs and preferences. This can result in inconsistent and siloed GTM operations and misalignment in goal setting, decision making and actions.

Siloed sales and marketing reports

Oftentimes, leveraging separate technologies in daily operations leads into siloed reporting. In order to get a unified view of the pipeline and revenue creation process, many companies end up working with spreadsheets. This is a highly laborious and error prone process of exporting sales and marketing data into spreadsheets for further processing and analysis, resulting in low efficiency, uninformed decision-making and lost focus.

Forbes Agency Council highlights shared goals and knowledge sharing and principal key factors for bridging the gap between their marketing and sales teams.

Integrated sales and marketing insights

Best performing GTM teams today leverage live, integrated insights for aligned goal-setting and unified performance reviews. Sales and marketing data is integrated, synthesized and analyzed automatically and presented on live insights across the sales and marketing funnel. This allows both teams to monitor progress, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions promptly.

Salesforce and HubSpot data combined into a unified funnel view

Dear Lucy offers powerful, aligned sales and marketing insights without the need of complex data projects. The platform automatically gathers data across HubSpot and Salesforce into one system and synthesis the data into real-time insights from marketing to sales.

Integrated sales and marketing insights

Shared source of Truth

Sharing powerful insights across top management and GTM teams adds transparency, predictability and engagement. With more informed decision making and timely actions companies can prevent revenue leakage and increase their growth rates significantly.

Read how we helped Apiture to create a unified and shared source of truth with integrated Salesforce and HubSpot dashboards.

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Accelerate your Sales Team’s Performance with Leaderboards

Sales leaderboards are a simple and easy way to introduce friendly competition, drive motivation and accelerate the sales performance across the company. Dear Lucy now enables you to display leaderboards with pictures to make them even more engaging and fun.

Fostering natural, friendly competition can fire up your sales team to exceed their goals. A sales leaderboard displays individual performance rankings and highlights the top performers, inspiring your team to strive for higher results.

Engage your team with highly visual sales dashboards

Dear Lucy leaderboards display live sales performance rankings from your chosen time periods like on a daily, monthly or yearly basis. Data is captured and refreshed automatically from your CRM solution, like Salesforce, HubSpot or Pipedrive. Instead of only showing numbers, you can spice up the competition by adding pictures for your sales team members. Whether you’d like to add headshots or fun avatars, up to your imagination!

Share Leaderboards on TV screens and right inside your CRM

Dear Lucy’s interactive sales dashboards are always available with your favourite device whether running a weekly meeting or a forecast call. Leaderboards are highly effective when displayed on a TV screen at the office or right inside your CRM. Any ambitious sales team member would like to be included in the best sellers list.

Engage the sales team by displaying live leaderboards right inside your CRM, like HubSpot or Salesforce.

Create a leaderboard in just minutes

When you have a Dear Lucy account, you can use our ready made leaderboards and get started in minutes. For more detailed information, please contact support@dearlucy.co.

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Dear Lucy offers a wide range of sales and revenue insights and forecasting tools for Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive. You can select your favourite KPIs and charts from the library of 300+ ready-made metrics, bring in custom fields from your CRM or have our team build metrics just for you.