Evaluating data driven practices in sales environments: user engagement and sales results

Abstract

Data visualization is a key tool to drive both end user adoption and change management activities within data initiatives and especially so in sales environments. Data is as much a part of the problem as the solution itself. There’s too much of it, it’s difficult to interpret and sellers hold on to tactical workload out of distrust in the data systems they are provided with.A data-driven approach to the sales engagement cycle can fundamentally improve performance. Using an analytical approach to determine client needs and sales ‘signals’, sales engagement can be tuned to be in sync with market needs. However, a range of technical, organisational and cultural issues need to be addressed before such a solution can truly start to deliver results.A prototype has been developed and implemented within IBM Digital Sales Europe to test the effectiveness of a data-driven approach to territory management. This practitioner focussed paper looks at the impact on business results that the programme used to introduce such new territory management methods had.It uses the 6 wise men approach to consider the nature of the problem and where the initiative directly impacted outcomes. Its answers questions on (1) what was the data driven initiative being implemented, (2) why it was important, (3) how it was implemented, (4) when it took place, (5) who has benefited and (6) where business value was created. This paper concludes that data initiatives require considerable transformation effort to be successful. Moreover, it identifies that there is a broad range of benefits available beyond the immediate territory management effectiveness of a data-driven client selection methodology.