For sales leaders, sales data represent the lifeline of a business. It is an amalgamation of data sets that help them to achieve goals and generate revenue for the company.
Traditionally, a sales job was intuition-driven, but not in this technological era. Technology has replaced the human to identify and find information that can help in sales. It has changed the way sales representatives think and feel.
What Is Sales Data?
Sales data is any kind of data or information that can help you sell anything – well in general at least. The modern definition of sales data is related to the data collected from the target audience, leads, or customers that can help advance the sales pipeline.
Sales data is any data that can help
- boost revenue
- increase sales
- popularize products
- develop brands
- or understand customers.
Sales data is important for understanding the customers more deeply. It helps you analyze what the prospective customers are looking for and give them exactly that.
4 Must-Have Sales Data
Here are four must-have sales data that can boost your sales.
1. Sales Growth
Sales growth is a metric used to assess the increase of revenue over a fixed time period. This is one of the most foundational metrics when it comes to sales data.
It can be analyzed by subtracting the previous month’s total sales from the current month’s and dividing it by the previous month’s total sales. If you multiply this by 100 you get the sales growth percentage.
As it is intimately related to revenue and profitability, this data should be calculated continuously, helping you change sales strategies.
2. Sales Target
A target is important when it comes to sales. It can be income, ROI, growth percentage, products sold, or anything else. A well-defined sales target can bring the employees together to work towards the business goals.
Targets can be short-term or long-term, dynamic, or fixed at multiple points. You can utilize digital visualizations that help in tracking and monitoring the target statuses.
3. Sales Funnel
Gathering leads and leading them down the funnel is difficult. As the leads head down the funnel, sales executives tend to lose a great deal of them. A successful customer is born only if they pass through the funnel and buy from you.
As each stage of the buying journey is different for each lead, keep track of what is happening at which stage. Here are some of the areas where you can lose leads.
- Customer relationship management
- Loss in prospect’s early stages
- Loss after a discovery call
- Loss before buying
- Loss after demo
Ensure to secure the data related to funnel processes and gain insights from them to avoid such losses.
4. Revenue per Sale
As one of the most calculated business metrics, revenue per sale is used to calculate the business valuation. It helps to benchmark growth, forecast, set revenue targets, and make long-term strategic decisions.
Revenue per sale answers one simple question – “Is my business doing well?.” The higher the results, the higher the profits. Revenue calculation helps to
- Plan out operating expenses
- Define growth strategy
- Determine investments
- Analyze historical trends
- Measure the efficiency of the pricing strategy
The List Doesn’t End Here
The above-mentioned are just four metrics that are used commonly, but it’s not the end. Your sales data should have what you need to assess your business to gain the growth you expect.
The key element is not having all types of sales data that can help you in the sales but having the resources that can analyze the data efficiently. Be it technology or human resources – sales data becomes only valuable if you can make use of it and reflect the same with increased sales.
